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1. The plant response to high CO₂ levels is heritable and orchestrated by DNA methylation

   https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.18876  

   Panda, Kaushik; Mohanasundaram, Boominathan; Gutierrez, Jorge; McLain, Lauren; Castillo, S_Elizabeth; Sheng, Hudanyun; Casto, Anna; Gratacós, Gustavo; Chakrabarti, Ayan; Fahlgren, Noah; et al (March 2023, New Phytologist)

   Summary Plant responses to abiotic environmental challenges are known to have lasting effects on the plant beyond the initial stress exposure. Some of these lasting effects are transgenerational, affecting the next generation. The plant response to elevated carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels has been well studied. However, these investigations are typically limited to plants grown for a single generation in a high CO₂environment while transgenerational studies are rare.We aimed to determine transgenerational growth responses in plants after exposure to high CO₂by investigating the direct progeny when returned to baseline CO₂levels.We found that both the flowering plantArabidopsis thalianaand seedless nonvascular plantPhyscomitrium patenscontinue to display accelerated growth rates in the progeny of plants exposed to high CO₂. We used the model species Arabidopsis to dissect the molecular mechanism and found that DNA methylation pathways are necessary for heritability of this growth response.More specifically, the pathway of RNA‐directed DNA methylation is required to initiate methylation and the proteins CMT2 and CMT3 are needed for the transgenerational propagation of this DNA methylation to the progeny plants. Together, these two DNA methylation pathways establish and then maintain a cellular memory to high CO₂exposure. 

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2. Rearrangement of a Ge( ii ) aryloxide to yield a new Ge( ii ) oxo-cluster [Ge ₆ (μ ₃ -O) ₄ (μ ₂ -OC ₆ H ₂ -2,4,6-Cy ₃ ) ₄ ](NH ₃ ) _0.5 : main group aryloxides of Ge( ii ), Sn( ii ), and Pb( ii ) [M(OC ₆ H ₂ -2,4,6-Cy ₃ ) ₂ ] ₂ (Cy = cyclohexyl)

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D3DT00906H  

   McLoughlin, Connor P.; Kaseman, Derrick C.; Fettinger, James C.; Power, Philip P. (July 2023, Dalton Transactions)

   Spontaneous Ge₆O₈cluster formation under ambient conditions using dispersion enhanced aryloxo ligands. 

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3. Links across ecological scales: Plant biomass responses to elevated CO₂

   https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16351  

   Maschler, Julia; Bialic‐Murphy, Lalasia; Wan, Joe; Andresen, Louise C.; Zohner, Constantin M.; Reich, Peter B.; Lüscher, Andreas; Schneider, Manuel K.; Müller, Christoph; Moser, Gerald; et al (November 2022, Global Change Biology)
4. Molecularly engineering polymeric membranes for H₂ / CO₂ separation at 100–300 °C

   https://doi.org/10.1002/pol.20200220  

   Hu, Leiqing; Pal, Sankhajit; Nguyen, Hien; Bui, Vinh; Lin, Haiqing (July 2020, Journal of Polymer Science)

   Abstract Over the last two decades, polymers with superior H₂/CO₂separation properties at 100–300 °C have gathered significant interest for H₂purification and CO₂capture. This timely review presents various strategies adopted to molecularly engineer polymers for this application. We first elucidate the Robeson's upper bound at elevated temperatures for H₂/CO₂separation and the advantages of high‐temperature operation (such as improved solubility selectivity and absence of CO₂plasticization), compared with conventional membrane gas separations at ~35 °C. Second, we describe commercially relevant membranes for the separation and highlight materials with free volumes tuned to discriminate H₂and CO₂, including functional polymers (such as polybenzimidazole) and engineered polymers by cross‐linking, blending, thermal treatment, thermal rearrangement, and carbonization. Third, we succinctly discuss mixed matrix materials containing size‐sieving or H₂‐sorptive nanofillers with attractive H₂/CO₂separation properties. 

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5. The role of indium composition in In_xGa_1−xN prestrained layer towards optical characteristics of EBL free GaN / InGaN nanowire LEDs for enhanced luminescence

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jnm.3169  

   Das, Samadrita; Lenka, Trupti Ranjan; Talukdar, Fazal Ahmed; Nguyen, Hieu_Pham Trung; Crupi, Giovanni (March 2024, International Journal of Numerical Modelling: Electronic Networks, Devices and Fields)

   Abstract In this work, an electron blocking layer (EBL) free light emitting diode (LED) nanowire is proposed with alternate prestrained layers of In_xGa_1−xN/GaN, which are inserted between the GaN/InGaN multi‐quantum wells (MQWs) and n‐GaN layer. This study signifies the role of prestrained layers on the piezoelectric polarization of LED nanowires, for enhanced luminescence. When compared with the conventional one, the EBL free LED nanowire with prestrained layer shows an enhancement of ~2.897% efficiency, which occurs due to the reduction of polarization field in the active region. The LED with 15% indium in the prestrained layer obtains a maximum efficiency of 85.21% along with a minimum efficiency droop of 3.848% at 40 mA injected current. The proposed III‐nitride LED nanostructure allows for achieving superior optical power across the output spectral range. 

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