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1. Recovering phosphorus as a coproduct from corn dry grind plants: A techno‐economic evaluation

   https://doi.org/10.1002/cche.10260  

   Juneja, Ankita; Cusick, Roland; Singh, Vijay (February 2020, Cereal Chemistry)

   Abstract Background and objectivesThe coproduct of ethanol industry, dried distiller's grains with solubles (DDGS), has phosphorus content in excess of the animal diet requirement, which leads to excess P in manure and causes environmental concerns. The objective of this study is to determine the technical and economic feasibility of recovering this excess P as a coproduct. FindingsThe amount of P was observed to reduce from 9.26 to 3.25 mg/g (db) of DDGS, which is consistent with the animal diet requirement of 3–4 mg P/g animal diet. For an existing dry grind plant of 40 million gallon ethanol capacity, an additional fixed cost of $5.7 million was estimated, with an operating cost increase of $1.29 million/year. ConclusionsThe total phosphorus recovered from the plant was estimated as 1,676 kg P/day, with an estimated operating cost of $2.33/kg P recovered. Significance and noveltyApproximately 37 million MT of DDGS is produced annually as animal food containing excess P, which is a serious concern for the environment. This study provides with an economically feasible solution to recover the excess P as a coproduct, which has a potential to be used as fertilizer on more than 56,000 acres of land annually, growing corn and soybean. 

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2. Restructuring a passive colloidal suspension using a rotationally driven particle

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D4SM00010B  

   Chen, Shih-Yuan; Lopez Rios, Hector Manuel; Olvera de la Cruz, Monica; Driscoll, Michelle (February 2024, Soft Matter)

   We use a rolling, driven particle to restructure an isotropic suspension solely through hydrodynamic interactions, resulting in an emergent pattern. We change this pattern by tuning the height of either the driven or passive particles. 

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3. A Note on Visible Islands

   https://doi.org/10.1556/012.2022.01524  

   Leuchtner, Sophie; Nicolás, Carlos M.; Suk, Andrew (June 2022, Studia Scientiarum Mathematicarum Hungarica)

   Given a finite point set P in the plane, a subset S⊆P is called an island in P if conv(S) ⋂ P = S . We say that S ⊂ P is a visible island if the points in S are pairwise visible and S is an island in P. The famous Big-line Big-clique Conjecture states that for any k ≥ 3 and l ≥ 4, there is an integer n = n(k, l ), such that every finite set of at least n points in the plane contains l collinear points or k pairwise visible points. In this paper, we show that this conjecture is false for visible islands, by replacing each point in a Horton set by a triple of collinear points. Hence, there are arbitrarily large finite point sets in the plane with no 4 collinear members and no visible island of size 13. 

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4. When does a stream become a river?

   https://doi.org/10.1002/rra.4185  

   Czuba, Jonathan_A; Allen, George_H (July 2023, River Research and Applications)

   Abstract The distinction between a “stream” and “river” is imprecise and vague despite the popular usage of the terms across disciplines for describing flowing waterbodies. Based on an analysis of named flowing waterbodies in the continental United States, we suggest a bank‐to‐bank channel width of 15 m as a working threshold in defining smaller “streams” from larger “rivers.” 

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5. A happy accident: a novel turfgrass reference genome

   https://doi.org/10.1093/g3journal/jkad073  

   Phillips, Alyssa R.; Seetharam, Arun S.; Albert, Patrice S.; AuBuchon-Elder, Taylor; Birchler, James A.; Buckler, Edward S.; Gillespie, Lynn J.; Hufford, Matthew B.; Llaca, Victor; Romay, Maria Cinta; et al (April 2023, G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics)

   Abstract Poa pratensis, commonly known as Kentucky bluegrass, is a popular cool-season grass species used as turf in lawns and recreation areas globally. Despite its substantial economic value, a reference genome had not previously been assembled due to the genome’s relatively large size and biological complexity that includes apomixis, polyploidy, and interspecific hybridization. We report here a fortuitous de novo assembly and annotation of a P. pratensis genome. Instead of sequencing the genome of a C4 grass, we accidentally sampled and sequenced tissue from a weedy P. pratensis whose stolon was intertwined with that of the C4 grass. The draft assembly consists of 6.09 Gbp with an N50 scaffold length of 65.1 Mbp, and a total of 118 scaffolds, generated using PacBio long reads and Bionano optical map technology. We annotated 256K gene models and found 58% of the genome to be composed of transposable elements. To demonstrate the applicability of the reference genome, we evaluated population structure and estimated genetic diversity in P. pratensis collected from three North American prairies, two in Manitoba, Canada and one in Colorado, USA. Our results support previous studies that found high genetic diversity and population structure within the species. The reference genome and annotation will be an important resource for turfgrass breeding and study of bluegrasses. 

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