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ABSTRACT This work facilitates the fabrication of alginate products from a natural Laminaria source using the newest pressure spinning method, inverted nozzle pressurized gyration (INPG). A coagulation bath with calcium chloride was used as the crosslinker to achieve the ion exchange for the formation of the “egg‐box” structure. The present study investigates the effects of the concentration of spinning solution and coagulation bath, working distance, and pressure on product morphology. The aforementioned variables were found to have a significant impact on the structure and dimensions of the product. However, it should be noted that these variables often act in a complex and interconnected manner, and their influence is frequently the result of combined effects. Consequently, “mapping” was provided to summarize how the combination of parameters alters the morphology. Utilizing the analytical tools of FTIR and XRD, it has been demonstrated that the method employed in this study can be effectively applied to the regeneration of natural alginates. Despite the peak intensities of products displaying varying degrees of change in both spectra, the overall chemical composition as a result of the functional groups remained consistent with the raw material, and suggests that the products are composed of alginate.

In the article titled “Using Sidereal Rotation Period Expressions to Calculate the Sun’s Rotation Period through Observation of Sunspots” [1], there was an error in Table 1, which should be corrected as shown in Table 1.

The Sun rotates faster at its equator than at its poles. This process is known as differential rotation and is seen in the motion of sunspots. Helioseismology has shown that the effect extends into the Sun's interior. It has not been possible to measure whether other stars also experience equivalent differential rotation. Benomar et al. used the Kepler spacecraft to monitor stellar oscillations of a group of Sun-like stars. By decomposing the oscillations into separate frequencies, they searched for signs of differential rotation. Several stars do indeed seem to have equators that spin faster than their poles, and none indicated the opposite pattern. Science , this issue p. 1231 Stellar oscillations show that some solar-type stars spin faster at their equators than their poles. The differentially rotating outer layers of stars are thought to play a role in driving their magnetic activity, but the underlying mechanisms that generate and sustain differential rotation are poorly understood. We report the measurement using asteroseismology of latitudinal differential rotation in the convection zones of 40 Sun-like stars. For the most significant detections, the stars’ equators rotate approximately twice as fast as their midlatitudes. The latitudinal shear inferred from asteroseismology is much larger than predictions from numerical simulations.

We use the anelastic spherical harmonic code to model the convective dynamo of solar-type stars. Based on a series of 15 3D MHD simulations spanning four bins in rotation and mass, we show what mechanisms are at work in these stellar dynamos with and without magnetic cycles and how global stellar parameters affect the outcome. We also derive scaling laws for the differential rotation and magnetic field based on these simulations. We find a weaker trend between differential rotation and stellar rotation rate, ( ΔΩ∝(∣Ω∣/Ω⊙)0.46 ) in the MHD solutions than in their HD counterpart ∣Ω∣/Ω⊙0.66 ), yielding a better agreement with the observational trends based on power laws. We find that for a fluid Rossby number between 0.15 ≲ Ro f ≲ 0.65, the solutions possess long magnetic cycle, if Ro f ≲ 0.42 a short cycle and if Ro f ≳ 1 (antisolar-like differential rotation), a statistically steady state. We show that short-cycle dynamos follow the classical Parker–Yoshimura rule whereas the long-cycle period ones do not. We also find efficient energy transfer between reservoirs, leading to the conversion of several percent of the star's luminosity into magnetic energy that could provide enough free energy to sustain intense eruptive behavior at the star’s surface. We further demonstrate that the Rossby number dependency of the large-scale surface magnetic field in the simulation ( BL,surf∼Rof−1.26 ) agrees better with observations ( BV∼Ros−1.4±0.1 ) and differs from dynamo scaling based on the global magnetic energy ( Bbulk∼Rof−0.5 ).

In the Tailake region of China, heavy nitrogen (N) loss of rice-wheat rotation systems, due to high fertilizer-N input with low N use efficiency (NUE), was widely reported. To alleviate the detrimental impacts caused by N loss, it is necessary to improve the fertilizer management practices. Therefore, a 3 yr field experiments with different N managements including organic combined chemical N treatment (OCN, 390 kg N ha−1 yr−1, 20% organic fertilizer), control-released urea treatment (CRU, 390 kg N ha−1 yr−1, 70% resin-coated urea), reduced chemical N treatment (RCN, 390 kg N ha−1 yr−1, all common chemical fertilizer), and site-specific N management (SSNM, 333 kg N ha−1 yr−1, all common chemical fertilizer) were conducted in the Taihu Lake region with the 'farmer's N' treatment (FN, 510 kg N ha−1 yr−1, all common chemical fertilizer) as a control. Grain yield, plant N uptake (PNU), NUE, and N losses via runoff, leaching, and ammonia volatilization were assessed. In the rice season, the FN treatment had the highest N loss and lowest NUE, which can be attributed to an excessive rate of N application. Treatments of OCN and RCN with a 22% reduced N rate from FN had no significant effect on PNU nor the yield of rice in the 3 yr; however, the NUE was improved and N loss was reduced 20-32%. OCN treatment achieved the highest yield, while SSNM has the lowest N loss and highest NUE due to the lowest N rate. In wheat season, N loss decreased about 28-48% with the continuous reduction of N input, but the yield also declined, with the exception of OCN treatment. N loss through runoff, leaching and ammonia volatilization was positively correlated with the N input rate. When compared with the pure chemical fertilizer treatment of RCN under the same N input, OCN treatment has better NUE, better yield, and lower N loss. 70% of the urea replaced with resin-coated urea had no significant effect on yield and NUE improvement, but decreased the ammonia volatilization loss. Soil total N and organic matter content showed a decrease after three continuous cropping years with inorganic fertilizer application alone, but there was an increase with the OCN treatment. N balance analysis showed a N surplus for FN treatment and a balanced N budget for OCN treatment. To reduce the environmental impact and maintain a high crop production, proper N reduction together with organic amendments could be sustainable in the rice-wheat rotation system in the Taihu Lake region for a long run.

Theory predicts the water hexamer to be the smallest water cluster with a three-dimensional hydrogen-bonding network as its minimum energy structure. There are several possible low-energy isomers, and calculations with different methods and basis sets assign them different relative stabilities. Previous experimental work has provided evidence for the cage, book, and cyclic isomers, but no experiment has identified multiple coexisting structures. Here, we report that broadband rotational spectroscopy in a pulsed supersonic expansion unambiguously identifies all three isomers; we determined their oxygen framework structures by means of oxygen-18-substituted water (H₂¹₈O). Relative isomer populations at different expansion conditions establish that the cage isomer is the minimum energy structure. Rotational spectra consistent with predicted heptamer and nonamer structures have also been identified.

Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are ubiquitous across all domains of life and play a range of functional roles. While folded domains are generally well described by a stable three-dimensional structure, IDRs exist in a collection of interconverting states known as an ensemble. This structural heterogeneity means that IDRs are largely absent from the Protein Data Bank, contributing to a lack of computational approaches to predict ensemble conformational properties from sequence. Here we combine rational sequence design, large-scale molecular simulations and deep learning to develop ALBATROSS, a deep-learning model for predicting ensemble dimensions of IDRs, including the radius of gyration, end-to-end distance, polymer-scaling exponent and ensemble asphericity, directly from sequences at a proteome-wide scale. ALBATROSS is lightweight, easy to use and accessible as both a locally installable software package and a point-and-click-style interface via Google Colab notebooks. We first demonstrate the applicability of our predictors by examining the generalizability of sequence–ensemble relationships in IDRs. Then, we leverage the high-throughput nature of ALBATROSS to characterize the sequence-specific biophysical behavior of IDRs within and between proteomes. ALBATROSS is a deep-learning-based model for predicting ensemble properties of intrinsically disordered proteins and protein regions, such as radius of gyration, end-to-end distance, polymer-scaling exponent and ensemble asphericity, directly from sequences.

While direct magnetic field measurements are rare for slowly rotating stars, spots observed during planetary transits provide a potential indicator of magnetic activity on stellar surfaces. Moreover, the rotation of the stellar surface can be probed by monitoring the spots’ position with time in subsequent transits. This study investigates the dynamic interplay of rotational shear and stellar rotation rate in six stars of spectral types F to M, all hosting exoplanets observed by the CoRoT space mission, except for one binary star from Kepler. The analysis, facilitated by the ECLIPSE code, unveils the physical properties of stellar spots, including radius, intensity, temperature, and position. The five CoRoT stars exhibit spot characteristics consistent with those observed in solar type stars. The determination of a spot longitude during different transits allows for the inference of the star’s differential rotation profile, revealing a decreasing trend of rotational shear with the mean stellar rotation period, given by ΔΩ∝P¯−0.9 . This implies that, at least for slow rotators (mean rotation period >5 days), as stars age, their differential rotation decreases. Additionally, the six stars analyzed here seem to fall into two categories, according to their spot flux deficit: those with ΔF spot > 0.005 and those with ΔF spot < 0.002.

We investigate how rotating convection responds to the imposition of a latitudinally varying heat flux at the base of the convective layer. This study is motivated by the solar near-surface shear layer, whose flows are thought to transition from a buoyancy-dominated regime near the photosphere to a rotation-dominated regime at depth. Here, we conduct a suite of spherical 3D, nonlinear simulations of rotating convection that operate in either the buoyancy-dominated (high-Rossby-number, high-Ro) or rotation-dominated (low-Rossby-number, low-Ro) regime. At the base of each model convection zone, we impose a heat flux whose latitudinal variation is opposite to the variation that the system would ordinarily develop. In both the low- and high-Ro regimes, a strong thermal wind balance is sustained in the absence of forcing. With a larger flux variation, this balance becomes stronger at high latitudes and weaker at low latitudes. The resulting differential rotation weakens in response, and at sufficiently high forcing, its latitudinal variation reverses for both low- and high-Ro systems. At fixed forcing, there exists a Rossby number above which the convective flows efficiently mix heat laterally, and the imposed flux variation does not imprint to the surface. At sufficiently high Ro, thermal wind balance is no longer satisfied. We discuss these results within the context of the Sun’s near-surface region, which possesses a weakened differential rotation when compared to the deep convection, along with little-to-no variation of photospheric emissivity in latitude.

Differentially rotating stars and planets transport angular momentum (AM) internally due to turbulence at rates that have long been a challenge to predict reliably. We develop a self-consistent saturation theory, using a statistical closure approximation, for hydrodynamic turbulence driven by the axisymmetric Goldreich–Schubert–Fricke instability at the stellar equator with radial differential rotation. This instability arises when fast thermal diffusion eliminates the stabilizing effects of buoyancy forces in a system where a stabilizing entropy gradient dominates over the destabilizing AM gradient. Our turbulence closure invokes a dominant three-wave coupling between pairs of linearly unstable eigenmodes and a near-zero frequency, viscously damped eigenmode that features latitudinal jets. We derive turbulent transport rates of momentum and heat and provide them in analytic forms. Such formulae, free of tunable model parameters, are tested against direct numerical simulations; the comparison shows good agreement. They improve upon prior quasi-linear or “parasitic saturation” models containing a free parameter. Given model correspondences, we also extend this theory to heat and compositional transport for axisymmetric thermohaline-instability-driven turbulence in certain regimes.