ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Root system architectures are complex and challenging to characterize effectively for agronomic and ecological discovery. METHODS: We propose a new method, Spatial and Texture Analysis of Root SystEm distribution with Earth mover's Distance (STARSEED), for comparing root system distributions that incorporates spatial information through a novel application of the Earth Mover's Distance (EMD). RESULTS: We illustrate that the approach captures the response of sesame root systems for different genotypes and soil moisture levels. STARSEED provides quantitative and visual insights into changes that occur in root architectures across experimental treatments. CONCLUSION: STARSEED can be generalized to other plants and provides insight into root system architecture development and response to varying growth conditions not captured by existing root architecture metrics and models. The code and data for our experiments are publicly available: https://github.com/GatorSense/STARSEED .
ABSTRACT
There are many applications that require the integration of a pump and a chemical sensor so that the solution being pumped can be analyzed in real time for a specific chemical species and the flow adjusted according to the measured concentration of that species. We describe here an alternative strategy: a chemoresponsive pump where a single device acts as both the sensor and pump simultaneously. We demonstrate this concept with a nanofluidic Pb2+-responsive pump that uses electroosmotic flow as the pumping technology, and a Pb2+-binding ionophore that allows the device to selectively respond to Pb2+. The pump yields high flow rates at low Pb2+ concentrations (<1 µM), but flow rate decreases with concentrations above this threshold and ultimately goes to zero at concentrations above 100 µM.