Strawberry plant relationship through the stolon.

Stolon is an elongated, two-node, vegetative, axillary shoot, which supports the ramet (rooted rosette) until it is completely independent on its own roots. The reciprocal capacity of the ramets, in a single runner chain, to sustain the growth and share locally abundant resources or to tolerate a local stress, is still in debate. This capacity may play an important role for improving nursery plant production and for better understanding the natural clonal multiplication. To describe strawberry stolon action, in plant-to-plant relationship, bare-rooted Camarosa ramets, joint in couples by their own stolons (generally, second and third ramet in a runner chain) were transplanted in two pots. The couples of ramets were treated in a factorial experiment with decortication (peeling a 2-mm ring of bark from the stolon), removal of root system or glyphosate application to one of the two ramets. In the studied system, the older ramet was referred as mother and the other as daughter. The two ramets were very similar in age and seem to act with a very limited hierarchic prevalence of the mother. When the root system of one ramet was eliminated, leaf number and chlorophyll content had a very slight decrease, independently in the mother ramet or in the daughter. The decortication did not reduce water integration, in any group of plants, but limited assimilate allocation towards the daughter ramet when the mother ramet had a severe root cut (not vice versa). The glyphosate action resulted localized in the sprayed ramet, which reduced chlorophyll content within 2 days and expired after 4 days.

Core structures and kink migrations of partial dislocations in 4H-SiC.

First-principles calculations are used to investigate the Shockley partial dislocations in 4H-SiC. We show that both dislocations can sustain the asymmetric and symmetric reconstructions along the dislocation line. The latter reconstructions are always electrically active. In particular, the Si(g) 30 degrees partials can explain the optical activation energy for the dislocation glide at -2.4 eV above the VB, the narrow peak at 2.87 eV and the broadband at -1.8 eV found in photoluminescence spectra. Further, we propose a new model to explain the stability of the symmetric reconstructions and the enhancement of the dislocation velocity in SiC.

Dislocations in carbon nanotube walls.

We present a novel interpretation of defected tubes based on a dislocation model. A scroll (a sheet rolled without closure) is considered as an axial edge dislocation in a multiwall nanotube (MWNT). Screw dislocation type defects separate scroll from nested-tubes within the same nanotube. The glide of the screw dislocation causes the transformation between these two forms. In some cases, the mechanism of formation of an MWNT could, therefore, start with the formation of a scroll which, by gliding of a screw dislocation, is transformed into the more stable MWNT We compare the structure and energetics of prismatic screw and edge dislocations in graphite and carbon nanotubes. We present calculations for the Peierls barrier of the first kind for graphite and we discuss this result for glide motion of screw dislocations in nanotubes. There is no evidence for stable sp3 atoms in any of the studied nanostructures.