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Background Crop diversification is considered as an imperative approach for synchronizing the plant nutrient demands and soil nutrient availability. Taking two or more crops from the same field in one year is considered as multiple cropping. It improves the diversity and abundance of soil microbes, thereby improving the growth and yield of crops. Therefore, the present study was conducted to explore the effects of different multiple winter cropping on soil microbial communities in paddy fields. In this study, eight rice cropping patterns from two multiple cropping systems with three different winter crops, including Chinese milk vetch (CMV), rape, and wheat were selected. The effects of different multiple winter cropping on soil microbial abundance, community structure, and diversity in paddy fields were studied by 16 S rRNA high-throughput sequencing and real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Results The results showed that different multiple winter cropping increased the operational taxonomic units (OTUs), species richness, and community richness index of the bacterial community in 0 ~ 20 cm soil layer. Moreover, soil physical and chemical properties of different multiple cropping patterns also affected the diversity and abundance of microbial bacterial communities. The multiple cropping increased soil potassium and nitrogen content, which significantly affected the diversity and abundance of bacterial communities, and it also increased the overall paddy yield. Moreover, different winter cropping changed the population distribution of microorganisms, and Proteobacteria , Acidobacteria , Nitrospira , and Chloroflexi were identified as the most dominant groups. Multiple winter cropping, especially rape-early rice-late rice (TR) andChinese milk vetch- early rice-late rice (TC) enhanced the abundance of Proteobacteria , Acidobacteria , and Actinobacteria and decreased the relative abundance of Verrucomicrobia and Euryarchaeota . Conclusion In conclusion, winter cropping of Chinese milk vetch and rape were beneficial to improve the soil fertility, bacteria diversity, abundance and rice yield.

Ustiloxins are the main mycotoxin in rice false smut, a devastating disease caused by Ustilaginoidea virens . A typical phytotoxicity of ustiloxins is strong inhibition of seed germination, but the physiological mechanism is not clear. Here, we show that the inhibition of rice germination by ustiloxin A (UA) is dose-dependent. The sugar availability in UA-treated embryo was lower while the starch residue in endosperm was higher. The transcripts and metabolites responsive to typical UA treatment were investigated. The expression of several SWEET genes responsible for sugar transport in embryo was down-regulated by UA. Glycolysis and pentose phosphate processes in embryo were transcriptionally repressed. Most of the amino acids detected in endosperm and embryo were variously decreased. Ribosomal RNAs for growth were inhibited while the secondary metabolite salicylic acid was also decreased under UA. Hence, we propose that the inhibition of seed germination by UA involves the block of sugar transport from endosperm to embryo, leading to altered carbon metabolism and amino acid utilization in rice plants. Our analysis provides a framework for understanding of the molecular mechanisms of ustiloxins on rice growth and in pathogen infection.

A novel modeling method was proposed to provide an improved representation of the actual microstructure of TiB/Ti-6Al-4V discontinuously-reinforced titanium matrix composite (DRTMC). Based on the Thiessen polygon structure, the representative volume element (RVE) containing the complex microstructures of the DRTMC was first generated. Thereafter, by using multiple user-defined subroutines in the commercial finite element software ABAQUS, the application of asymmetric mesh periodic boundary conditions on the RVE was realized, and the equivalent elastic modulus of the DRTMC was determined according to the homogenization method. Through error analyses on the experimental and calculated results regarding the equivalent elastic parameters of the DRTMC, the rationality of generating the DRTMC finite element model by using the present method was validated. Finally, simulations based on four types of network-like models revealed that the present simplifications to the particle shape of the reinforcement phase had less of an influence on the overall composite strength. Moreover, the present study demonstrates that the DRTMC enhancement is mainly attributed to the matrix strengthening, rather than the load-transferring mechanism. The strengthening influences of the distribution forms of the reinforcement phases, including their distribution density and orientation, were studied further. It was found that both the higher distribution density and limited distribution orientation of the particles would increase the probability of overlapping and merging between particles, and; therefore, higher strength could be yielded when the volume fraction of the reinforcement phase reached a certain threshold. Owing to the versatility of the developed methods and programs, this work can provide a useful reference for the characterization of the mechanical properties of other composites types.

For a wide range of insect species, the microbiota has potential roles in determining host developmental programme, immunity and reproductive biology. The tea geometrid moths Ectropis obliqua and E. grisescens are two closely related species that mainly feed on tea leaves. Although they can mate, infertile hybrids are produced. Therefore, these species provide a pair of model species for studying the molecular mechanisms of microbiotal involvement in host reproductive biology. In this study, we first identified and compared the compositions of microbiota between these sibling species, revealing higher microbiotal diversity for E. grisescens. The microbiota of E. obliqua mainly comprised the phyla Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Cyanobacteria, whereas that of E. grisescens was dominated by Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Firmicutes. At the genus level, the dominant microbiota of E. grisescens included Wolbachia, Enterobacter and Pseudomonas and that of E. obliqua included Melissococcus, Staphylococcus and Enterobacter. Furthermore, we verified the rate of Wolbachia to infect 80 samples from eight different geographical populations, and the results supported that only E. grisescens harboured Wolbachia. Taken together, our findings indicate significantly different microbiotal compositions for E. obliqua and E. grisescens, with Wolbachia possibly being a curial factor influencing the reproductive isolation of these species. This study provides new insight into the mechanisms by which endosymbiotic bacteria, particularly Wolbachia, interact with sibling species.

One 3-D transient temperature field model for a thin uniform plate caused by a moving laser heat source is described in present study. The heat source model with a power density in Gaussian-distribution form is considered when a finite-thin uniform plate is heated. By using the separate variable method and the Newton-Cotes method, a semi-analytical solution of 3-D heat conduction equation in the finite field is obtained. Numerical results show that the effect of laser heat source distribution, laser moving speed as well as aspect ratio of the thin uniform plate have great influence on the 3-D distribution of the temperature field.

The fatigue crack growth tests of compact tension (CT) specimens of 2024-T4 aluminum alloy were conducted under constant amplitude loading with different R-ratios, 0.05, 0.1, 0.5, 0.75, respectively. The thickness of the specimen is 3.8mm. All the fatigue crack growth experiments were carried out in ambient air without a pre-crack. The early crack growth region reflects the influence of the notch. An optical reading micrometer with a magnification of 40 was used to measure the crack length. The size of the notch together with the loading conditions has a great influence on the early crack growth within the notch influenced region. Beyond the notch influenced zone, the stable fatigue crack growth is reached and can be characterized by the Paris law. The experimental results indicate that fatigue crack growth rate increases with the R-ratio for a given stress intensity factor amplitude.

The fatigue crack growth experiments of 2024-T4 aluminum alloy were carried out to study the thickness effects on the fatigue crack growth rate. Round compact specimens with two different thickness, 3.8mm and 12.5mm, were subjected to Mode I loading with four R-ratios (0.05, 0.1, 0.5 and 0.75) and loading amplitudes. An optical reading microscope with a magnification of 40 was used to measure the crack length. Stable crack growth is characterized by the standard form of the Paris law, material constants of the Paris law corresponding to each R-ratio were obtained by fitting the experimental data. The fatigue crack growth rate of specimens with a thickness of 12.5mm is apparently higher than that of specimens with a thickness of 3.8mm when R-ratio is equal to 0.1, 0.5 and 0.75. While the effect of thickness is relatively less significant for the case of . It can be concluded that the fatigue crack growth rate increases with R-ratio or thickness when one of them is identical.

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) improves instruction following capabilities of large language models (LLMs), but suffers from training inefficiency due to inadequate difficulty assessment. Moreover, RLVR is prone to over-optimization, where LLMs exploit verification shortcuts without aligning to the actual intent of user instructions. We introduce Instruction Following Decorator (IFDecorator}, a framework that wraps RLVR training into a robust and sample-efficient pipeline. It consists of three components: (1) a cooperative-adversarial data flywheel that co-evolves instructions and hybrid verifications, generating progressively more challenging instruction-verification pairs; (2) IntentCheck, a bypass module enforcing intent alignment; and (3) trip wires, a diagnostic mechanism that detects reward hacking via trap instructions, which trigger and capture shortcut exploitation behaviors. Our Qwen2.5-32B-Instruct-IFDecorator achieves 87.43% accuracy on IFEval, outperforming larger proprietary models such as GPT-4o. Additionally, we demonstrate substantial improvements on FollowBench while preserving general capabilities. Our trip wires show significant reductions in reward hacking rates. We will release models, code, and data for future research.