ICDW-YOLO: An Efficient Timber Construction Crack Detection Algorithm.

A robust wood material crack detection algorithm, sensitive to small targets, is indispensable for production and building protection. However, the precise identification and localization of cracks in wooden materials present challenges owing to significant scale variations among cracks and the irregular quality of existing data. In response, we propose a crack detection algorithm tailored to wooden materials, leveraging advancements in the YOLOv8 model, named ICDW-YOLO (improved crack detection for wooden material-YOLO). The ICDW-YOLO model introduces novel designs for the neck network and layer structure, along with an anchor algorithm, which features a dual-layer attention mechanism and dynamic gradient gain characteristics to optimize and enhance the original model. Initially, a new layer structure was crafted using GSConv and GS bottleneck, improving the model's recognition accuracy by maximizing the preservation of hidden channel connections. Subsequently, enhancements to the network are achieved through the gather-distribute mechanism, aimed at augmenting the fusion capability of multi-scale features and introducing a higher-resolution input layer to enhance small target recognition. Empirical results obtained from a customized wooden material crack detection dataset demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed ICDW-YOLO algorithm in effectively detecting targets. Without significant augmentation in model complexity, the mAP50-95 metric attains 79.018%, marking a 1.869% improvement over YOLOv8. Further validation of our algorithm's effectiveness is conducted through experiments on fire and smoke detection datasets, aerial remote sensing image datasets, and the coco128 dataset. The results showcase that ICDW-YOLO achieves a mAP50 of 69.226% and a mAP50-95 of 44.210%, indicating robust generalization and competitiveness vis-à-vis state-of-the-art detectors.

Regional gradients in intraspecific seed mass variation are associated with species biotic attributes and niche breadth.

Quantifying intraspecific trait variation (ITV) is crucial for understanding species local adaptation and regional distribution. Intraspecific seed mass variation (ITVsm) is expected to vary with environmental gradients or co-vary with related biotic attributes, but these relationships are not well known in a multispecies space. We performed interspecific and phylogenetic analyses to evaluate the relative power of three species biotic attributes and four niche breadth traits in explaining ITVsm variation for 434 eastern Qinghai-Tibetan species. We showed a positive relationship between species' ITVsm and their niche breadth in the light, moisture and disturbance dimensions, supporting the idea that high ITV allows species to match their traits to different habitat conditions and thus to distribute in a wide range of environments. However, we did find significant direct effect of species' thermal niche on individual seed mass variation. Meanwhile, we showed significant effects of seed dispersal mode, but not of life form and pollination type, on ITVsm. This suggests that the covariation or co-evolution between seed and disperser was related to the pattern and magnitude of ITVsm, but not to plant lifespan, the quality and allocation pattern of available resources and the availability of pollination vector. Lastly, all multivariate models showed a significant combined contribution of species' biotic attributes and niche breadth to their ITVsm, implying that intrinsic biotic limitations and extrinsic abiotic pressures may operate simultaneously in controlling regional-scale intraspecific seed development.

Geographic Variation in the Petiole-Lamina Relationship of 325 Eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Woody Species: Analysis in Three Dimensions.

The petiole-lamina relationship is central to the functional tradeoff between photosynthetic efficiency and the support/protection cost. Understanding environmental gradients in the relationship and its underlying mechanisms remains a critical challenge for ecologists. We investigated the possible scaling of the petiole-lamina relationships in three dimensions, i.e., petiole length (PL) vs. lamina length (LL), petiole cross sectional area (PCA) vs. lamina area (LA), and petiole mass (PM) vs. lamina mass (LM), for 325 Qinghai-Tibetan woody species, and examined their relation to leaf form, altitude, climate, and vegetation types. Both crossspecies analysis and meta-analysis showed significantly isometric, negatively allometric, and positively allometric scaling of the petiole-lamina relationships in the length, area, and mass dimensions, respectively, reflecting an equal, slower, and faster variation in the petiole than in the lamina in these trait dimensions. Along altitudinal gradients, the effect size of the petiole-lamina relationship decreased in the length and mass dimensions but increased in the area dimension, suggesting the importance of enhancing leaf light-interception and nutrient transport efficiency in the warm zones in petiole development, but enhancing leaf support/protection in the cold zones. The significant additional influences of LA, LM, and LA were observed on the PL-LL, PCA-LA, and PM-LM relationships, respectively, implying that the single-dimension petiole trait is affected simultaneously by multidimensional lamina traits. Relative to simple-leaved species, the presence of petiolule in compound-leaved species can increase both leaf light interception and static gravity loads or dynamic drag forces on the petiole, leading to lower dependence of PL variation on LL variation, but higher biomass allocation to the petiole. Our study highlights the need for multidimension analyses of the petiole-lamina relationships and illustrates the importance of plant functional tradeoffs and the change in the tradeoffs along environmental gradients in determining the relationships.

Response of Leaf Traits of Eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Broad-Leaved Woody Plants to Climatic Factors.

Plant ecologists have long been interested in quantifying how leaf traits vary with climate factors, but there is a paucity of knowledge on these relationships given a large number of the relevant leaf traits and climate factors to be considered. We examined the responses of 11 leaf traits (including leaf morphology, stomatal structure and chemical properties) to eight common climate factors for 340 eastern Qinghai-Tibetan woody species. We showed temperature as the strongest predictor of leaf size and shape, stomatal size and form, and leaf nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations, implying the important role of local heat quantity in determining the variation in the cell- or organ-level leaf morphology and leaf biochemical properties. The effects of moisture-related climate factors (including precipitation and humidity) on leaf growth were mainly through variability in leaf traits (e.g., specific leaf area and stomatal density) related to plant water-use physiological processes. In contrast, sunshine hours affected mainly cell- and organ-level leaf size and shape, with plants developing small/narrow leaves and stomata to decrease leaf damage and water loss under prolonged solar radiation. Moreover, two sets of significant leaf trait-climate relationships, i.e., the leaf/stomata size traits co-varying with temperature, and the water use-related leaf traits co-varying with precipitation, were obtained when analyzing multi-trait relationships, suggesting these traits as good indicators of climate gradients. Our findings contributed evidence to enhance understanding of the regional patterns in leaf trait variation and its environmental determinants.

Sol-gel Autocombustion Synthesis of Nanocrystalline High-entropy Alloys.

A reduction in the particle size is expected to improve the properties and increase the application potential of high-entropy alloys. Therefore, in this study, a novel sol-gel autocombustion technique was first used to synthesize high-entropy alloys. The average grain size of the prepared nanocrystalline CoCrCuNiAl high-entropy alloys showed was 14 nm with an excellent and uniform dispersion, exhibiting a distinct magnetic behavior similar to the superparamagnetic behavior. We show that the metal nitrates first form (Co,Cu,Mg,Ni,Zn)O high-entropy oxides, and then in situ reduce to CoCrCuNiAl high-entropy alloys by the reducing gases, and the chelation between citric acid and the metal ions and the in situ chemical reactions are the dominant reaction mechanisms. We demonstrate that the sol-gel autocombustion process is an efficient way to synthesize solid solution alloys eluding the restriction of a high mixing entropy.