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Integration of superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors with nanophotonic waveguides is a key technological step that enables a broad range of classical and quantum technologies on chip-scale platforms. The excellent detection efficiency, timing and noise performance of these detectors have sparked growing interest over the last decade and have found use in diverse applications. Almost 10 years after the first waveguide-coupled superconducting detectors were proposed, here, we review the performance metrics of these devices, compare both superconducting and dielectric waveguide material systems and present prominent emerging applications.

The plant cell wall (CW) is a complex structure that acts as a mechanical barrier, restricting the access to most microbes. Phytopathogenic microorganisms can deploy an arsenal of CW-degrading enzymes (CWDEs) that are required for virulence. In turn, plants have evolved proteins able to inhibit the activity of specific microbial CWDEs, reducing CW damage and favoring the accumulation of CW-derived fragments that act as damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) and trigger an immune response in the host. CW-derived DAMPs might be a component of the complex system of surveillance of CW integrity (CWI), that plants have evolved to detect changes in CW properties. Microbial CWDEs can activate the plant CWI maintenance system and induce compensatory responses to reinforce CWs during infection. Recent evidence indicates that the CWI surveillance system interacts in a complex way with the innate immune system to fine-tune downstream responses and strike a balance between defense and growth.

As stated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the air pollution in the urban environment is the silent cause for around seven million death worldwide. This is due to the indoor and outdoor exposure to various pollutants emitted in the built environment: as the global trend is an increase of the population living in towns, this issue is predicted to become even worser. As a matter of fact, the built environment can cause the trapping of pollutants instead of their dispersion. In this work, the dispersion of a plume of a pollutant (carbon monoxide, CO), emitted from a chimneystack above the roof of courtyard in a group of courtyards, is investigated. This is achieved employing the ENVI-met software, able to model, among the others, the turbulence and pollutant dispersion in the built environment. Results show, among the others, how the pollutant emitted from an upstream building can harm also the downstream buildings.

In the contemporary urban planning, the outdoor comfort is more and more relevant. As a matter of fact, in some Nations the microclimate design, and so, among the others, a quantification of the outdoor comfort is already compulsory, while in many others it is recommended. Various methods to quantify the outdoor comfort can be adopted (e.g., among the others, the PMV-Predicted Mean Vote, or the PET-Physiological Equivalent Temperature), but in every formulation the quantification of the wind velocity, otherwise referred to as ventilation, close to the buildings under study is needed. In this paper, the ventilation inside and outside a group of courtyard buildings is studied via numerical simulations with ENVI-met. ENVI-met is a three-dimensional microclimate model able to simulate the ventilation in an urban environment and the interaction of air flows with surfaces of different materials, with plants and with other typical elements of the built environment in a given climate. Results highlight the relevance of the mutual influence of buildings and of their dimensions in modelling the ventilation inside and outside a courtyard.

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are fundamental components of the plant innate immune system. MPK3 and MPK6 are Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) MAPKs activated by pathogens and elicitors such as oligogalacturonides (OGs), which function as damage-associated molecular patterns, and flg22, a well-known microbe-associated molecular pattern. However, the specific contribution of MPK3 and MPK6 to the regulation of elicitor-induced defense responses is not completely defined. In this work we have investigated the roles played by these MAPKs in elicitor-induced resistance against the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinérea. Analysis of single mapk mutants revealed that lack of MPK3 increases basal susceptibility to the fungus, as previously reported, but does not significantly affect elicitor-induced resistance. Instead, lack of MPK6 has no effect on basal resistance but suppresses OG-and flg22-induced resistance to B. cinérea. Overexpression of the AP2C1 phosphatase leads to impaired OG-and flg22-induced phosphorylation of both MPK3 and MPK6, and to phenotypes that recapitulate those of the single mapk mutants. These data indicate that OG-and flg22-induced defense responses effective against B. cinérea are mainly dependent on MAPKs, with a greater contribution of MPK6.

Lithium-Niobate-On-Insulator (LNOI) is emerging as a promising platform for integrated quantum photonic technologies because of its high second-order nonlinearity and compact waveguide footprint. Importantly, LNOI allows for creating electro-optically reconfigurable circuits, which can be efficiently operated at cryogenic temperature. Their integration with superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) paves the way for realizing scalable photonic devices for active manipulation and detection of quantum states of light. Here we demonstrate integration of these two key components in a low loss (0.2 dB/cm) LNOI waveguide network. As an experimental showcase of our technology, we demonstrate the combined operation of an electrically tunable Mach-Zehnder interferometer and two waveguide-integrated SNSPDs at its outputs. We show static reconfigurability of our system with a bias-drift-free operation over a time of 12 hours, as well as high-speed modulation at a frequency up to 1 GHz. Our results provide blueprints for implementing complex quantum photonic devices on the LNOI platform. The combination of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors and electro-optically reconfigurable circuits in a cryogenic environment is notoriously difficult to reach. Here, the authors realise this on a Lithium-Niobate-On-Insulator platform, reaching high speed modulation at a frequency up to 1 GHz.

In most European school classrooms, ventilation rates fall far short of standard requirements due to an inefficient use of manual airing, creating an unhealthy environment and increasing the risk of airborne viral transmission among occupants. To promote proper Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) levels, the required ventilation could be achieved by considering NV-oriented measures or Mechanical Ventilation systems with Heat Recovery (MVHR) implementation. This study defines a method to evaluate the potential primary energy implications of implementing MVHR in classrooms in the Mediterranean climate in comparison with NV control, selecting the Italian public-school building stock as a case study. Dynamic energy simulations were conducted across reference building construction types, considering locations representative of the national climate variability. Results show that MVHR can reduce primary energy up to 42.31 kWh/m2. At the national level, it can achieve an attainable annual primary energy saving of 227 GWh, approximately 30% of current classroom consumption, with more than 70% of this potential located in northern provinces. A regression model was also used to relate energy impact to the Heating Degree Days, offering a scalable and transferable tool to support retrofit policies within similar southern European contexts.

Turbulence is still an unsolved issue with enormous implications in several fields, from the turbulent wakes on moving objects to the accumulation of heat in the built environment or the optimization of the performances of heat exchangers or mixers. This review deals with the techniques and trends in turbulent flow simulations, which can be achieved through both laboratory and numerical modeling. As a matter of fact, even if the term “experiment” is commonly employed for laboratory techniques and the term “simulation” for numerical techniques, both the laboratory and numerical techniques try to simulate the real-world turbulent flows performing experiments under controlled conditions. The main target of this paper is to provide an overview of laboratory and numerical techniques to investigate turbulent flows, useful for the research and technical community also involved in the energy field (often non-specialist of turbulent flow investigations), highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of the main techniques, as well as their main fields of application, and also to highlight the trends of the above mentioned methodologies via bibliometric analysis. In this way, the reader can select the proper technique for the specific case of interest and use the quoted bibliography as a more detailed guide. As a consequence of this target, a limitation of this review is that the deepening of the single techniques is not provided. Moreover, even though the experimental and numerical techniques presented in this review are virtually applicable to any type of turbulent flow, given their variety in the very broad field of energy research, the examples presented and discussed in this work will be limited to single-phase subsonic flows of Newtonian fluids. The main result from the bibliometric analysis shows that, as of 2021, a 3:1 ratio of numerical simulations over laboratory experiments emerges from the analysis, which clearly shows a projected dominant trend of the former technique in the field of turbulence. Nonetheless, the main result from the discussion of advantages and disadvantages of both the techniques confirms that each of them has peculiar strengths and weaknesses and that both approaches are still indispensable, with different but complementary purposes.

Significance Damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), released from host tissues as a consequence of pathogen attack, have been proposed as endogenous activators of immune responses in both animals and plants. Oligogalacturonides (OGs), oligomers of α-1,4–linked galacturonic acid generated in vitro by the partial hydrolysis of pectin, have been shown to function as potent elicitors of immunity when they are applied exogenously to plant tissues. However, there is no direct evidence that OGs can be produced in vivo or that they function as immune elicitors. This report provides the missing evidence that OGs can be generated in planta and can function as DAMPs in the activation of plant immunity. Oligogalacturonides (OGs) are fragments of pectin that activate plant innate immunity by functioning as damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). We set out to test the hypothesis that OGs are generated in planta by partial inhibition of pathogen-encoded polygalacturonases (PGs). A gene encoding a fungal PG was fused with a gene encoding a plant polygalacturonase-inhibiting protein (PGIP) and expressed in transgenic Arabidopsis plants. We show that expression of the PGIP–PG chimera results in the in vivo production of OGs that can be detected by mass spectrometric analysis. Transgenic plants expressing the chimera under control of a pathogen-inducible promoter are more resistant to the phytopathogens Botrytis cinerea , Pectobacterium carotovorum , and Pseudomonas syringae . These data provide strong evidence for the hypothesis that OGs released in vivo act as a DAMP signal to trigger plant immunity and suggest that controlled release of these molecules upon infection may be a valuable tool to protect plants against infectious diseases. On the other hand, elevated levels of expression of the chimera cause the accumulation of salicylic acid, reduced growth, and eventually lead to plant death, consistent with the current notion that trade-off occurs between growth and defense.