Super-Transparent Soil for In Situ Observation of Root Phenotypes.

Transparent soil (TS) presents immense potential for root phenotyping due to its ability to facilitate high-resolution imaging. However, challenges related to transparency, mechanical properties, and cost hinder its development. Herein, we introduce super-transparent soil (s-TS) prepared via the droplet method using low acyl gellan gum and hydroxyethyl cellulose crosslinked with magnesium ions. The refractive index of the hydroxyethyl cellulose solution (1.345) closely aligns with that of water (1.333) and the low acyl gellan gum solution (1.340), thereby significantly enhancing the transmittance of hydrogel-based transparent soil. Optimal transmittance (98.45%) is achieved with polymer concentrations ranging from 0.8 to 1.6 wt.% and ion concentrations between 0.01 and 0.09 mol·L-1. After 60 days of plant cultivation, s-TS maintains a transmittance exceeding 89.5%, enabling the detailed visualization of root growth dynamics. Furthermore, s-TS exhibits remarkable mechanical properties, withstanding a maximum compressive stress of 477 kPa and supporting a maximum load-bearing depth of 186 cm. This innovative approach holds promising implications for advanced root phenotyping studies, fostering the investigation of root heterogeneity and the development of selective expression under controlled conditions.

Engineering Rapeseed Germination and Root Growth with Mechanical Strength of Polysaccharide Hydrogel.

Plant roots are highly sensitive to physical stress in the soil, with appropriate mechanical impedance promoting root elongation and lateral root growth. However, few studies have quantitatively explored the relationship between the mechanical impedance of the growth medium and the phenotypes of plant roots. In this study, we used a tensile machine equipped with a self-made steel needle mimicking the root tip to measure the force needed to penetrate the hydrogel medium (agar, low acyl gellan gum, and κ-carrageenan), providing insights into the force required for the rapeseed root tip to enter the medium following germination. These findings indicate that root penetration length is inversely associated with the mechanical strength of the growth medium, with variations observed in the root system adaptability across different substrates. Specifically, when the gel puncture resistance of the culture medium without adding MS reached approximately 18.4 mN, root penetration and growth were significantly hindered. With the addition of 1/2 MS medium, the polysaccharide concentration is 1.0 wt %, which is more suitable for cultivating rapeseed. This research not only offers a method for quantifying root phenotypes and medium mechanical impedance but also presents an approach for plant growth regulation and crop breeding.

[Rapid FTIR-ATR Method for the Quantification of Bitumen Property].

The quality of bitumen directly affects road performance and road life. Traditional analytical methods-for wax content, softening point and penetration of bitumen are tedious and time-consuming. A new fast method, with which the three properties can be determined at same time, is proposed in this paper. The spectra of 220 bitumen were collected and their wax content, softening point and penetration data were determined according to the standard JTJ052-2000. The quantitative calibration models for wax content, softening point and penetration were established using partial least squares (PLS), with SECV 0.13, 0.88, 3.18 and SEP 0.14, 1.06, 3.90, less than the reproducibility error stipulated in the standard method. Three samples were in random selected to test the repeatability, the results met the precision requirement of the standard method. With its advantages of better repeatability, fast, easy operation, the new method can be used as an alternative for the determination of wax content, softening point and penetration of bitumen.

[Determination of Alcoholysis Degree and Volatile Matter of Poly-Vinyl Alcohol Using Diffuse-Reflection Near Infrared Spectroscopy].

A new method using reflection NIR technology was developed to determine the alcoholysis degree and volatile matter of Poly-vinyl alcohol (PVA). 120 samples were used in this research. NIR spectra of the sample were scanned by the spectrometer from 1 000 to 1 800 nm. The alcoholysis degree and volatile matter were determined by the national standard method of volumetric and gravimetric method respectivily. Partial least squares (PLS1) was used to establish the quantitative correction model of alcoholysis degree and volatile matter of PVA. The corrected relationship (Rc) of alcoholysis degree and volatile matter was 0.976 and 0.981 respectively. The corrected standard deviation(SEC) was 0.176 and 0.197. The predicted relationship (R(p)) was 0.967 and 0.969. The predicted deviation(SEP) was 0.202 and 0.193. The test for actual samples showed that the NIR method was fitted for the requirement of PVA analysis.

[Rapid Quantitative Analysis of Content of the Additive in Gasoline for Motor Vehicles by Near-Infrared Spectroscopy].

A new rapid quantitative method for the determination of oxygenates and the compounds not included in the national standard in gasoline using near-infrared spectroscopy is raised by this paper. This method combine near-infrared spectroscopy with oblique projection. This experiment choose four different types of gasoline, including reconcile gasoline, FCC refined gasoline, reformed gasoline and desulfurizing gasoline. Prepare series gasoline samples containing different concentrations and different types of compounds. Using FTIR spectrometer to measure those samples and got transmission spectrums. Oblique projection method could separate quantity spectral signal from mixed spectrum signal, and using projection to calculate and analyze the separated signal to obtain the content of measured component. The deviation between this method and the real content is low, the absolute error is less than 0.8 and the relative error is less than 8%. For the actual gasoline samples, compare results of this method with gas chromatography, the absolute error are less than 0.85 and the relative error are less than 6.85%. This method solves the problem of general multivariate calibration methods. It is very significant for the development of rapid detection technology using NIR suitable for on-site and the improvement of the quality of gasoline.

[Determination of degree of polymerization of natural cellulose pulp using near-infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy].

A new method of near-infrared (NIR) diffuse reflectance spectroscopy is proposed to rapidly determine the degree of polymerization (DP) of natural cellulose (cotton and wood) pulp produced by a new clean pulping process. One hundred and ninety five samples were collected and their DP data were determined by standard method GB/T 9107-1999. The spectroscopy measurement method of the samples was studied and their near-infrared diffuse reflectance spectra were collected. The quantitative DP calibration models of one mixed cotton & wood and two separate cotton and wood pulps were established by partial least squares (PLS). The optimum models were developed using the spectra pretreated by derivative, autoscaling and mean-centering, and their performance is as follows: correlation coefficient of 0.980, 0.993 and 0.886, and RMSEP of 147, 143 and 53, respectively. The accuracy of NIR method was also studied. The results show that the accuracy of the two separate models of cotton and wood is better than that of the mixed model, and the precision of the two separate models is better than that of GB/T9107-1999. The identification model of cotton and wood was also established using principal component analysis (PCA). The result shows that the spectra of cotton and wood pulp have obvious difference, and the model can identify successfully the two kinds of pulp. The result indicates that the new NIR method is feasible to realize the on-line analysis of polymerization degree of natural cellulose pulp with its advantage of rapidness and easy operation.

Respiratory virus infections among children in South China.

Acute respiratory tract infection is an important cause of morbidity and mortality with a worldwide disease burden. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and clinical characteristics of children with viral-induced acute respiratory tract infection, in Southern China. Nasopharyngeal aspirate samples from 1,980 pediatric patients with suspected acute respiratory tract infection, and 82 samples from healthy subject controls were collected for routine examination at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Shantou University Medical College, from October 2007 to August 2011. Specimens were tested by multiplex polymerase chain reaction (mPCR). At least one or more viruses were detected from 1,087 samples (54.9%). These included laboratory confirmations for 446 respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), 386 influenza virus A (FluA), 315 human rhinovirus (HRV), 135 human bocavirus (HBoV), 119 Parainfluenza virus 3 (PIV3), 82 Parainfluenza virus 1 (PIV1), 66 adenovirus (ADV), 53 WU polyomavirus (WUPyV), 52 human metapneumovirus (hMPV), and 29 influenza virus B (FluB) samples. Samples from healthy subjects were negative for any virus. Of the patients with positive specimens, 107 (9.8%) were admitted to pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Co-infection with at least two of the viral pathogens under study was observed in 325 of the 1,980 patients (16.4% of the total number of cases). These findings may help in the diagnosis of viral infections of the respiratory tract in children, and help to consider current and potential therapeutic approaches for the treatment of acute respiratory tract infection, and further respiratory complications.

[Fast determination of induction period of motor gasoline using Fourier transform attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy].

A new method is proposed for the fast determination of the induction period of gasoline using Fourier transform attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR). A dedicated analysis system with the function of spectral measurement, data processing, display and storage was designed and integrated using a Fourier transform infrared spectrometer module and chemometric software. The sample presentation accessory designed which has advantages of constant optical path, convenient sample injection and cleaning is composed of a nine times reflection attenuated total reflectance (ATR) crystal of zinc selenide (ZnSe) coated with a diamond film and a stainless steel lid with sealing device. The influence of spectral scanning number and repeated sample loading times on the spectral signal-to-noise ratio was studied. The optimum spectral scanning number is 15 times and the optimum sample loading number is 4 times. Sixty four different gasoline samples were collected from the Beijing-Tianjin area and the induction period values were determined as reference data by standard method GB/T 8018-87. The infrared spectra of these samples were collected in the operating condition mentioned above using the dedicated fast analysis system. Spectra were pretreated using mean centering and 1st derivative to reduce the influence of spectral noise and baseline shift A PLS calibration model for the induction period was established by correlating the known induction period values of the samples with their spectra. The correlation coefficient (R2), standard error of calibration (SEC) and standard error of prediction (SEP) of the model are 0.897, 68.3 and 91.9 minutes, respectively. The relative deviation of the model for gasoline induction period prediction is less than 5%, which meets the requirements of repeatability tolerance in GB method. The new method is simple and fast. It takes no more than 3 minutes to detect one sample. Therefore, the method is feasible for implementing fast determination of gasoline induction period, and of a positive meaning in the evaluation of fuel quality.

[Determination of alpha-cellulose content of natural cellulose pulp in a new clean pulping process using near infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy].

A new near infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy method is proposed to rapidly detect alpha-cellulose content of natural cellulose (plant fiber: cotton, wood) pulp in a new clean pulping process. One hundred forty two samples were collected and their alpha-cellulose content data were determined by standard method GB/T 9107-1999. The samples were homogenized by grinding pretreatment to improve spectroscopy measurement accuracy. Effective classification models were built by SIMCA, with the total correct identification. Using partial least squares (PLS) quantitative calibration, alpha-cellulose of the whole and separate cotton and wood pulp was established, with the correlation coefficients of 0.954, 0.911, 0.839, SEP, 0.024, 0.012 and 0.016, respectively. The repeatability results obtained by the new method are in agreement with the results from GB/T 9107-1999. The new method is feasible for determining alpha-cellulose content of natural cellulose (plant fiber: cotton, wood) in clean pulping process.

[Study on nondestructive rapid identification method of foods containing trans-fatty acids using diffuse near infrared spectroscopy].

A rapid nondestructive method for identifying intact foods containing trans fatty acids (TFA) using diffuse near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) was proposed in the present paper. The diffuse Fourier transform near infrared (FT-NIR) spectra of intact samples were collected by fiber probe, and the reference data of TFA content were determined by Chinese standard method GB/T 22110-2008 (gas chromatography (GC) method). In this work, all the samples were classified into two categories: foods with TFA and foods without TFA according to the TFA content of the foods. The identification models were established by different supervised pattern recognition algorithms including partial least square discriminant analysis (PLSDA), support vector machine (SVM), soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA) and K-nearest neighbor method (KNN) etc. The performances of the established models employing different algorithms, data pretreatments and wavelength bands were compared. The results show that PLSDA and SVM algorithms have the ability of identifying intact foods with TFA, and the performance of identification models established by PLSDA is better than that of SVM. The PLSDA models established by the wavelength bands of 4 138-4 428, 5 507-5 963 and 7 794-8 960 cm(-1) which were pretreated with pretreatment methods of auto scaling and second derivative have the best performance. The correct classification percentages of its calibration and validation set are 96.4% and 88%, respectively, which indicates that this method is feasible for the identification of foods with TFA. This NIR method above mentioned has the characteristics of rapidness, non-destruction and easy operation due to the elimination of sample pretreatment such as oil extraction and grinding, therefore it is very suitable for on-line and in-site detection application.

[Sugar characterization of mini-watermelon and rapid sugar determination by near infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy].

In the present paper, the distribution of sugar level within the mini-watermelon was studied, a new sugar characterization method of mini-watermelon using average sugar level, the highest sugar level and the lowest sugar level index is proposed. Feasibility of nondestructive determination of mini-watermenlon sugar level using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy information was investigated by an experiment. PLS models for measuring the 3 sugar levels were established. The results obtained by near infrared spectroscopy agreed with that of the new method established above.

[Study on rapid quantitative analysis of the active ingredient in ABC extinguishing agent and type identification of extinguishing agent powders using near infrared spectroscopy].

A new quantitative method to determine the NH4H2PO4 in ABC powder extinguishing agent and to distinguish between ABC and BC powder extinguishing agents using near infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy is proposed. A PLS calibration model for the NH4H2PO4 content in extinguishing agent powder was established, with RMSECV = 2.1, RMSEP = 2.4. An identification model for ABC and BC powder extinguishing agents was built by SIMCA and the identification accuracy rate is 100%. This method, compared to the present standard method, has the characteristics of rapidness and easy operation, whichis fit for the quantitative analysis and type distinguishing of the fire products on site.

[A new approach to rapid determination of compound fertilizer composition].

In the present paper, a new approach to rapid determination of compound fertilizer composition was introduced, namely first preparing aqueous solution of solid fertilizer, then predicting the compound fertilizer composition using the near infrared transmission spectra of the solution. Using the new method, models were built by means of PLS regression, and the standard errors of prediction of total nitrogen content, P2O5 content, and K2O content are 0.5, 0.7, 0.8, and 2.0, respectively. This has solved the problem of large prediction error for K content of compound fertilizer using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy due to the fact that KCl dose not have near infrared absorption, and achieved rapid analysis of all compositions of compound fertilizer in 5 minutes.

[Fast determination of contents of nutrients and stone powder in compound fertilizer using near infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy].

In the present paper, a new approach to fast determination of contents of nutrients, including total nitrogen content (N), P2O5 content (P) and K2O content (K), and of stone powder content in compound fertilizer composed of urea, ammonium dihydrogen phosphate, potassium chloride and stone powder was proposed using near infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. PLS models of N, P and stone powder content were built with the SEP values of 0.8, 0.8 and 1.4 respectively. The information on which stone powder content model was built is the spectrum of crystal water existing in stone powder. K content was calculated using other ingredientcontents by normalization principle with a SEP value of 1.5. Although the SEP values are a little larger than the reproducibility errors of the GB/T methods which are conventional methods, the new method can be accepted by situ quality control in the production process of compound fertilizer.

[Study of the over-fitting in building PLS model using orthogonal signal correction].

In the present paper, the over-fitting phenomenon in building PLS model using orthogonal signal correction (OSC) was studied through establishment of quantitative calibration models for the peanut oil content in blending edible oils, and for the dimethylsulfoxide concentration in water solution. The cross validation results and the predication results of PLS models using OSC and without using OSC were compared to evaluate the effectiveness of OSC for improving the performance of PLS1 model. The results show that the application of OSC to PLS modeling will lead to an over-fitting phenomenon. According to the principles of their algorithms, when OSC and PLS are used together, the signals which are not correlated to the interested property are removed twice from the raw spectra. This leads to deleting the parts of useful information in spectra, and to spoiling the predictive ability of PLS models to some extent.

[Study on building MLR model using orthogonal signal correction].

MLR and PLS models with or without OSC were studied through establishing quantitative calibration models for the peanut oil content in blending edible oils, and for the dimethylsulfoxide concentration in water solution. The cross validation results and the predication results of MLR models, were compared to evaluate the effectiveness of OSC for improving the performance of MLR model. The results show that the SEC or SEP of MLR models using OSC gets smaller. Selecting appropriate wavelengths combination by CARS method, prediction capacity of MLR model using OSC is better than PLS1 model using raw spectrum.

[Determination of brix and POL in sugar cane juice by using near infrared spectroscopy coupled with BP-ANN].

The models of quantitative analysis of brix and pol in sugar cane juice were established by using near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) coupled with the back propagation-artificial neural network method (BP-ANN). The spectra of cane juice samples were obtained by the way of 2 mm optical length transmission and using the NIR spectrometer of 1,000-1,800 nm wavelength. Firstly, the data of original spectra were pretreated by Savitzky-Golay derivative and mean-centering. Secondly, the wavelength range of model was optimized by using correlation coefficient method coupled with the characteristic absorbance of the spectrum. Finally, the principal components, obtained by PLS dimension-reducing, were inputed into BP-ANN. The calibration models were established by calibration set and validated by prediction set. The results showed that the related coefficients (R2) of prediction for brix and pol were 0.982 and 0.979, respectively; and the standard errors of prediction (SEP) for brix and pol were 0.159 and 0.137, respectively. BP-ANN was more accurate in the prediction of brix and pol compared with the partial least square method (PLS). The method can be applied to fast and accurate determination of brix and pol in sugar cane juice.

[NIR spectrometer for non-destruction measurement of oil contents in a corn seed].

NIR spectromneter for non-destruction measurement of oil contents in an integrated kernel of corn was manufactured. Using LED (light emitting diode) as the light source and six filters as the monochromator, the specifications of the instrument are compared with those of the commercial instruments. The regression coefficient, the standard error, and the relative error of measuring oil contents in an integrated kernel of corn are 0.9688, 0.72 and 0.062 respectively. The results meet the demand of high-oil corn breeding.