Revealing the relative importance among plant species, slope positions, and soil types on rhizosphere microbial communities in northern tropical karst and non-karst seasonal rainforests of China.

Rhizosphere microbes have an extremely close relationship with plants and the study on the relationship between rhizosphere microorganisms and their influencing factors is conducive to the protection of vegetation and the maintenance of biodiversity. Here we investigated how plant species, slope positions and soil types affect the rhizosphere microbial community. Slope positions and soil types were collected from northern tropical karst and non-karst seasonal rainforests. The results indicated that soil types played a predominant role in the development of rhizosphere microbial communities (28.3% of separate contribution rate), more than plant species identity (10.9% of separate contribution rate) and slope position (3.5% of separate contribution rate). Notably, environmental factors closely related to soil properties were the major influence factors that controlling the rhizosphere bacterial community structure in the northern tropical seasonal rainforest, especially pH. Additionally, plant species also influenced the rhizosphere bacterial community. In low nitrogen content soil environments, rhizosphere biomarkers of dominant plant species were often nitrogen-fixing strains. It suggested that plants might have a selective adaptation mechanism to rhizosphere microorganisms to obtain the advantages of nutrient supply. Overall, soil types exerted the biggest influence on rhizosphere microbial community structure, followed by plant species and finally slope positions.

Security-Related Hardware Cost Optimization for CAN FD-Based Automotive Cyber-Physical Systems.

The introduction of various networks into automotive cyber-physical systems (ACPS) brings great challenges on security protection of ACPS functions, the auto industry recommends to adopt the hardware security module (HSM)-based multicore ECU to secure in-vehicle networks while meeting the delay constraint. However, this approach incurs significant hardware cost. Consequently, this paper aims to reduce security enhancing-related hardware cost by proposing two efficient design space exploration (DSE) algorithms, namely, stepwise decreasing-based heuristic algorithm (SDH) and interference balancing-based heuristic algorithm (IBH), which explore the task assignment, task scheduling, and message scheduling to minimize the number of required HSMs. Experiments on both synthetical and real data sets show that the proposed SDH and IBH are superior than state-of-the-art algorithm, and the advantage of SDH and IBH becomes more obvious as the increase about the percentage of security-critical tasks. For synthetic data sets, the hardware cost can be reduced by 61.4% and 45.6% averagely for IBH and SDH, respectively; for real data sets, the hardware cost can be reduced by 64.3% and 54.4% on average for IBH and SDH, respectively. Furthermore, IBH is better than SDH in most cases, and the runtime of IBH is two or three orders of magnitude smaller than SDH and state-of-the-art algorithm.

Species packing and the latitudinal gradient in beta-diversity.

The decline in species richness at higher latitudes is among the most fundamental patterns in ecology. Whether changes in species composition across space (beta-diversity) contribute to this gradient of overall species richness (gamma-diversity) remains hotly debated. Previous studies that failed to resolve the issue suffered from a well-known tendency for small samples in areas with high gamma-diversity to have inflated measures of beta-diversity. Here, we provide a novel analytical test, using beta-diversity metrics that correct the gamma-diversity and sampling biases, to compare beta-diversity and species packing across a latitudinal gradient in tree species richness of 21 large forest plots along a large environmental gradient in East Asia. We demonstrate that after accounting for topography and correcting the gamma-diversity bias, tropical forests still have higher beta-diversity than temperate analogues. This suggests that beta-diversity contributes to the latitudinal species richness gradient as a component of gamma-diversity. Moreover, both niche specialization and niche marginality (a measure of niche spacing along an environmental gradient) also increase towards the equator, after controlling for the effect of topographical heterogeneity. This supports the joint importance of tighter species packing and larger niche space in tropical forests while also demonstrating the importance of local processes in controlling beta-diversity.

Partitioning beta diversity in a tropical karst seasonal rainforest in Southern China.

Both deterministic and stochastic processes have been linked to forest community assembly; however, their contribution to beta diversity has not been properly explored, and no studies to date have investigated their impacts on sparse depleted soils in forests that contain widespread exposed limestone karst. We found that the pairwise differences in species composition between quadrates was determined by a balanced variation in abundance, whereby the individuals of some species at one site were substituted by an equivalent number of individuals of different species at another site. Both the total beta diversity and its balanced variation in abundance declined with increasing sampling grain size. Our research indicated that environmental differences exert a strong influence on beta diversity, particularly total beta diversity and its balanced abundance variation in larger grain sizes. It was evident that deterministic and stochastic processes worked together, and that deterministic processes were more important than stochastic processes in the regulation of beta diversity in this heterogeneous tropical karst seasonal rainforest of Southern China. However, in future research a functional trait based approach will be required to tease out the relative degree of deterministic and stochastic processes toward an assessment of the temporal changes in species composition.

Beta diversity determinants in Badagongshan, a subtropical forest in central China.

Niche and neutral theories emphasize different processes contributing to the maintenance of species diversity. In this study, we calculated the local contribution to beta diversity (LCBD) of every cell, using variation partitioning in combination with spatial distance and environmental variables of the 25-ha Badagongshan plot (BDGS), to determine the contribution of environmentally-related variation versus pure spatial variation. We used topography and soil characteristics as environmental variables, distance-based Moran's eigenvectors maps (dbMEM) to describe spatial relationships among cells and redundancy analysis (RDA) to apportion the variation in beta diversity into three components: pure environmental, spatially-structured environmental, and pure spatial. Results showed LCBD values were negatively related to number of common species and positively related to number of rare species. Environment and space jointly explained ~60% of the variation in species composition; soil variables alone explained 21.6%, slightly more than the topographic variables that explained 15.7%; topography and soil together explained 27%, slightly inferior to spatial variables that explained 34%. The BDGS forest was controlled both by the spatial and environmental variables, and the results were consistent across different life forms and life stages.

Species associations in a species-rich subtropical forest were not well-explained by stochastic geometry of biodiversity.

The stochastic dilution hypothesis has been proposed to explain species coexistence in species-rich communities. The relative importance of the stochastic dilution effects with respect to other effects such as competition and habitat filtering required to be tested. In this study, using data from a 25-ha species-rich subtropical forest plot with a strong topographic structure at Badagongshan in central China, we analyzed overall species associations and fine-scale species interactions between 2,550 species pairs. The result showed that: (1) the proportion of segregation in overall species association analysis at 2 m neighborhood in this plot followed the prediction of the stochastic dilution hypothesis that segregations should decrease with species richness but that at 10 m neighborhood was higher than the prediction. (2) The proportion of no association type was lower than the expectation of stochastic dilution hypothesis. (3) Fine-scale species interaction analyses using Heterogeneous Poisson processes as null models revealed a high proportion (47%) of significant species effects. However, the assumption of separation of scale of this method was not fully met in this plot with a strong fine-scale topographic structure. We also found that for species within the same families, fine-scale positive species interactions occurred more frequently and negative ones occurred less frequently than expected by chance. These results suggested effects of environmental filtering other than species interaction in this forest. (4) We also found that arbor species showed a much higher proportion of significant fine-scale species interactions (66%) than shrub species (18%). We concluded that the stochastic dilution hypothesis only be partly supported and environmental filtering left discernible spatial signals in the spatial associations between species in this species-rich subtropical forest with a strong topographic structure.

Thermally induced phase transformation of pearl powder.

The polymorphic phase transformation of thermally treated pearl powder was investigated by X-ray diffraction and thermoanalytical techniques. The phase transformation was based on quantification of the calcite content at various temperatures using Rietveld refinement analysis. The results show that the phase transformation of pearl aragonite occurred within a temperature range of 360-410 °C, which is 50-100 °C lower than the range for non-biomineralized aragonite. These thermoanalytical results suggest that the phase transformation of pearl aragonite may occur immediately after the thermal decomposition of the organic matrix in the pearl powder. An important finding is that decomposition of the organic matrix may greatly facilitate such transformation by releasing additional space for an easier structural reconstruction during the phase transformation process.

Novel 2N bit bipolar photonic digital-to-analog converter based on optical DQPSK modulation coupled with differential detection.

A novel 2N bit bipolar photonic digital-to-analog converter (PDAC) scenario based on the optical differential quadrature phase shift keying (ODQPSK) modulation coupled with differential detection is proposed. Compared with other proposed schemes, this bipolar PDAC has a greater dynamic range and a larger noise margin with good scalabilities both in speed and resolution. We demonstrate a 4 bit PDAC in a proof-of-principle experiment at a sampling rate of 2.5 GS/s.

Simultaneous clock recovery and dispersion, OSNR monitoring for 112-Gbit/s NRZ-DQPSK using frequency down-conversion electro-optical phase-locked loop.

A cost effective clock recovery scheme simultaneously providing signal performance monitoring is proposed for high speed electrical time domain multiplexing (ETDM) transmission systems to release the bandwidth requirement on the involved electrical devices. In the scheme, we first convert the clock frequency down in the optical domain using electroptic modulation, and then extract the clock with a phase locked loop (PLL) after photo-detection. All the devices involved are operated at frequencies lower than half of the symbol rate. Furthermore, we use a quadrature phase detector in the PLL to create a monitor signal which characterizes the transmitted signal performance in terms of optical-to-noise ratio (OSNR) and accumulated chromatic dispersion (ACD). This scheme is applied to a 112-Gbit/s none-return-to-zero (NRZ) differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) system. Experimental results show that the clock can be recovered in a dispersion range of -40 to 40 ps/nm, and the evaluated OSNR, over a range of 18~36 dB, has a deviation smaller than 1 dB compared to the measured one based on the optical spectrum method. The bit error ratio remains below 10(-9) for 12 hours in the back-to-back case and 2 hours after transmission over 100-km standard single mode fiber (SSMF).

Noise analysis in photonic true time delay systems based on broadband optical source and dispersion components.

The noise in photonic true time delay systems based on broadband optical source and dispersion components is investigated. It is found that the beat noise induced by the optical source begins to dominate and grows far larger than other noise terms quickly, as long as the detected optical power is above some certain value P(thr). When the system dispersion is nonzero, the output carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR) will change periodically with the optical bandwidth due to the noise power increment and the dispersion induced radio frequency signal power degradation. The maximum CNR is the peak value of the first period. For a set of specified system conditions, the P(thr) is calculated to be -21 dBm, and the optimal optical bandwidth is 0.8 nm, at which the maximum CNR is 93.3 dB by considering the noise in a 1 Hz bandwidth. The results are verified experimentally.

Simultaneous pulse carving misalignment and pi-phase-shift monitoring of a return-to-zero differential phase-shift keying system using a coherent hybrid.

A technique for monitoring both the pulse carving misalignment and pi phase shift in a return-to-zero (RZ) differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) system based on a phase modulator is proposed and demonstrated. By monitoring the mean-power variation of a hybrid local oscillation lightwave with the modulated signal lightwave without any deliberated control, the technique can provide the information on pulse carving misalignment and phase modulation index simultaneously, as the power variation reflects the asymmetric distribution of RZ-DPSK in a signal constellation diagram. It is characterized as transparent to signal bit rate, central wavelength, and absolute power level. Both the simulation and experiment results show that more than +/- 15% bit duration misalignment and +/- 5% phase shift deviated from pi can be detected.

Impact of group delay ripples of chirped fiber grating on optical beamforming networks.

The impact of group delay ripples of chirped fiber gratings (CFG) on the performance of optical beamforming networks (OBFN) is investigated. The paper theoretically analyzes the quantified relations among the amplitude and period of CFG, the optical angle frequency interval at the inter-element arrays and the beampointing shift. The wavelength instability of the optical source is also investigated. This instability-induced phase jitter of RF signal has been verified experimentally. The theoretical models are proposed to analyze the performance of CFG-based OBFN systems.

Improved optical single-sideband generation using the self-modulation birefringence difference in semiconductor optical amplifiers.

By employing the self-modulation birefringence difference in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), an improved method is proposed to generate a complete optical single-sideband (OSSB) signal. Over 30 dB sideband suppression ratios (SSRs) of lower OSSB signals are obtained over a 12 dB input power range and a 36 nm wavelength span, with a maximum of over 35 dB. Upper OSSB signals with an SSR of over 15 dB are observed using a SOA for what is believed to be the first time. This method is effective even for the carrier-suppressed signal. The theory for OSSB generation in an SOA is extended and verified by experiment.

All-optical subcarrier demodulation in upstream link of millimeter-wave radio over fiber system.

A means to achieve all-optical broadband demodulation of subcarrier back into digital data in an upstream link of a millimeter-wave radio over fiber (RoF) system is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. In the central station, the subcarrier from the base station of RoF system can be demodulated in the optical domain directly, without any millimeter-wave electronic device. Using this approach, the rf power degradation can be avoided even when the base stations in systems employ the conventional simple double-sideband modulation. Therefore, an inexpensive and simple configuration of the uplink for broadband signal receiving can be realized.

Polystyrene/Fe3O4 magnetic emulsion and nanocomposite prepared by ultrasonically initiated miniemulsion polymerization.

Ultrasonically initiated miniemulsion polymerization of styrene in the presence of Fe3O4 nanoparticles was successfully employed to prepare polystyrene (PS)/Fe3O4 magnetic emulsion and nanocomposite. The effects of Fe3O4 nanoparticles on miniemulsion polymerization process, the structure, morphology and properties of PS/Fe3O4 nanocomposite were investigated. The increase in the amount of Fe3O4 nanoparticles drastically increases the polymerization rate due to that Fe3O4 nanoparticles increase the number of radicals and the cavitation bubbles. Polymerization kinetics of ultrasonically initiated miniemulsion polymerization is similar to that of conventional miniemulsion polymerization. PS/Fe3O4 magnetic emulsion consists of two types of particles: latex particles with Fe3O4 nanoparticles and latex particles with no encapsulated Fe3O4 nanoparticles. Fe3O4 nanoparticles lower the molecular weight of PS and broaden the molecular weight and particle size distribution. Thermal stability of PS/Fe3O4 nanocomposite increases with the increase in Fe3O4 content. PS/Fe3O4 emulsion and nanocomposite exhibit magnetic properties. PS/Fe3O4 magnetic particles can be separated from the magnetic emulsion by an external magnetic field and redispersed into the emulsion with agitation.

X-band continuously variable true-time delay lines using air-guiding photonic bandgap fibers and a broadband light source.

We propose a novel implementation of true-time delay (TTD) using air-guiding photonic bandgap fibers (PBGFs) and a broadband light source. The air-guiding PBGFs are experimentally studied and used in the TTD module for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The proposed approach shows the advantages of simple architecture, compact size, larger dispersion, low-temperature sensitivity, and high immunity to nonlinear effects in our experiments. The PBGFs were spliced with single-mode fibers with a 2 dB loss, and the characteristics of the PBGFs were measured. The PBGF-TTD with a continuously tunable time delays from 0 to 500 ps was demonstrated using the amplified spontaneous emission light of an erbium-doped filter amplifier as a broadband light source.

Stiffness analysis in the numerical solution of Raman amplifier propagation equations.

For the first time, the stiffness of Raman amplifier propagation equations is analyzed. And based on this analysis, a novel method for propagation equations is proposed to enhance the stability of numerical simulation. To verify the reliability of this method, simulation experiments are employed by using our method and the existent predictor-corrector method with comparison. The results show that our backward differentiation formulae method behaves much better in stability with a comparative accuracy.