Phytophthora capsici: Recent Progress on Fundamental Biology and Disease Management 100 Years After Its Description.

Phytophthora capsici is a destructive oomycete pathogen of vegetable, ornamental, and tropical crops. First described by L.H. Leonian in 1922 as a pathogen of pepper in New Mexico, USA, P. capsici is now widespread in temperate and tropical countries alike. Phytophthora capsici is notorious for its capability to evade disease management strategies. High genetic diversity allows P. capsici populations to overcome fungicides and host resistance, the formation of oospores results in long-term persistence in soils, zoospore differentiation in the presence of water increases epidemic potential, and a broad host range maximizes economic losses and limits the effectiveness of crop rotation. The severity of disease caused by P. capsici and management challenges have led to numerous research efforts in the past 100 years. Here, we discuss recent findings regarding the biology, genetic diversity, disease management, fungicide resistance, host resistance, genomics, and effector biology of P. capsici.

Low-dimensional boron structures based on icosahedron B12.

One-dimensional icosahedral boron chains and two-dimensional icosahedral boron sheets (icosahedral α, δ6, and δ4 sheets) that contain icosahedra B12 as their building units have been predicted in a computer simulation study using a state-of-the-art semi-empirical Hamiltonian. These novel low-dimensional icosahedral structures exhibit interesting bonding and electronic properties. Specifically, the three-center, two-electron bonding between icosahedra B12 of the boron bulk (rhombohedral boron) transforms into a two-center bonding in these new allotropes of boron sheets. In contrast to the previously reported stable buckled α and triangular boron monolayer sheets, these new allotropes of boron sheets form a planar network. Calculations of electronic density of states (DOS) reveal a semiconducting nature for both the icosahedral chain and the icosahedral δ6 and δ4 sheets, as well as a nearly gapless (or metallic-like) feature in the DOS for the icosahedral α sheet. The results for the energy barrier per atom between the icosahedral δ6 and α sheets (0.17 eV), the icosahedral δ6 and δ4 sheets (0.38 eV), and the icosahedral α and δ4 sheets (0.27 eV), as indicated in the respective parentheses, suggest that these new allotropes of boron sheets are relatively stable.

Next generation of the self-consistent and environment-dependent Hamiltonian: Applications to various boron allotropes from zero- to three-dimensional structures.

An upgrade of the previous self-consistent and environment-dependent linear combination of atomic orbitals Hamiltonian (referred as SCED-LCAO) has been developed. This improved version of the semi-empirical SCED-LCAO Hamiltonian, in addition to the inclusion of self-consistent determination of charge redistribution, multi-center interactions, and modeling of electron-electron correlation, has taken into account the effect excited on the orbitals due to the atomic aggregation. This important upgrade has been subjected to a stringent test, the construction of the SCED-LCAO Hamiltonian for boron. It was shown that the Hamiltonian for boron has successfully characterized the electron deficiency of boron and captured the complex chemical bonding in various boron allotropes, including the planar and quasi-planar, the convex, the ring, the icosahedral, and the fullerene-like clusters, the two-dimensional monolayer sheets, and the bulk alpha boron, demonstrating its transferability, robustness, reliability, and predictive power. The molecular dynamics simulation scheme based on the Hamiltonian has been applied to explore the existence and the energetics of ∼230 compact boron clusters BN with N in the range from ∼100 to 768, including the random, the rhombohedral, and the spherical icosahedral structures. It was found that, energetically, clusters containing whole icosahedral B12 units are more stable for boron clusters of larger size (N > 200). The ease with which the simulations both at 0 K and finite temperatures were completed is a demonstration of the efficiency of the SCED-LCAO Hamiltonian.

Pion electromagnetic form factor at spacelike momenta.

A novel method is employed to compute the pion electromagnetic form factor, F(π)(Q²), on the entire domain of spacelike momentum transfer using the Dyson-Schwinger equation (DSE) framework in QCD. The DSE architecture unifies this prediction with that of the pion's valence-quark parton distribution amplitude (PDA). Using this PDA, the leading-order, leading-twist perturbative QCD result for Q²F(π)(Q²) underestimates the full computation by just 15% on Q²â‰³8 GeV², in stark contrast to the result obtained using the asymptotic PDA. The analysis shows that hard contributions to the pion form factor dominate for Q²â‰³8 GeV², but, even so, the magnitude of Q²F(π)(Q²) reflects the scale of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking, a pivotal emergent phenomenon in the standard model.

Pion distribution amplitude from lattice QCD.

A method is explained through which a pointwise accurate approximation to the pion's valence-quark distribution amplitude (PDA) may be obtained from a limited number of moments. In connection with the single nontrivial moment accessible in contemporary simulations of lattice-regularized QCD, the method yields a PDA that is a broad concave function whose pointwise form agrees with that predicted by Dyson-Schwinger equation analyses of the pion. Under leading-order evolution, the PDA remains broad to energy scales in excess of 100 GeV, a feature which signals persistence of the influence of dynamical chiral symmetry breaking. Consequently, the asymptotic distribution φπ(asy)(x) is a poor approximation to the pion's PDA at all such scales that are either currently accessible or foreseeable in experiments on pion elastic and transition form factors. Thus, related expectations based on φ φπ(asy)(x) should be revised.

Imaging dynamical chiral-symmetry breaking: pion wave function on the light front.

We project onto the light front the pion's Poincaré-covariant Bethe-Salpeter wave function obtained using two different approximations to the kernels of quantum chromodynamics' Dyson-Schwinger equations. At an hadronic scale, both computed results are concave and significantly broader than the asymptotic distribution amplitude, φ(π)(asy)(x)=6x(1-x); e.g., the integral of φ(π)(x)/φ(π)(asy)(x) is 1.8 using the simplest kernel and 1.5 with the more sophisticated kernel. Independent of the kernels, the emergent phenomenon of dynamical chiral-symmetry breaking is responsible for hardening the amplitude.

Dying at 23 with 1p36 deletion syndrome: Laura's family story.

Laura was unusual. She had always been different and at times difficult. She was born with a genetic disorder, diagnosed as 1p36 deletion syndrome when she was 21 years old. At 23 she suffered her first cardiac arrest at home and entered the hospital system for the first time apart from infancy. After initially appearing to do well, she suffered a second cardiac arrest 10 weeks after admission. This was followed by an irreversible deterioration and she died 14 weeks after admission. We her family had been with her throughout her traumatic experience. This is our story.