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Creators/Authors contains: "Ji, Wei"

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  1. Levitated ferromagnets act as ultraprecise magnetometers, which can exhibit high quality factors due to their excellent isolation from the environment. These instruments can be utilized in searches for ultralight dark matter candidates, such as axionlike dark matter or dark-photon dark matter. In addition to being sensitive to an axion-photon coupling or kinetic mixing, which produce physical magnetic fields, ferromagnets are also sensitive to the effective magnetic field (or “axion wind”) produced by an axion-electron coupling. While the dynamics of a levitated ferromagnet in response to a dc magnetic field have been well studied, all of these couplings would produce ac fields. In this work, we study the response of a ferromagnet to an applied ac magnetic field and use these results to project their sensitivity to axion and dark-photon dark matter. We pay special attention to the direction of motion induced by an applied ac field, in particular, whether it precesses around the applied field (similar to an electron spin) or librates in the plane of the field (similar to a compass needle). We show that existing levitated ferromagnet setups can already have comparable sensitivity to an axion-electron coupling as comagnetometer or torsion balance experiments. In addition, future setups can become sensitive probes of axion-electron coupling, dark-photon kinetic mixing, and axion-photon coupling, for ultralight dark matter masses < 5feV. 
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  2. Abstract After the preparation of 2D electronic flat band (EFB) in van der Waals (vdW) superlattices, recent measurements suggest the existence of 1D electronic flat bands (1D‐EFBs) in twisted vdW bilayers. However, the realization of 1D‐EFBs is experimentally elusive in untwisted 2D layers, which is desired considering their fabrication and scalability. Herein, the discovery of 1D‐EFBs is reported in an untwisted in situ‐grown two atomic‐layer Bi(110) superlattice self‐aligned on an SnSe(001) substrate using scanning probe microscopy measurements and density functional theory calculations. While the Bi–Bi dimers of Bi zigzag (ZZ) chains are buckled, the epitaxial lattice mismatch between the Bi and SnSe layers induces two 1D buckling reversal regions (BRRs) extending along theZZdirection in each Bi(110)‐11 × 11 supercell. A series of 1D‐EFBs arises spatially following BRRs that isolate electronic states along the armchair (AC) direction and localize electrons in 1D extended states alongZZdue to quantum interference at a topological node. This work provides a generalized strategy for engineering 1D‐EFBs in utilizing lattice mismatch between untwisted rectangular vdW layers. 
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  3. Arabidopsis RESISTANCE TO POWDERY MILDEW 8.2 (RPW8.2) is specifically induced by the powdery mildew (PM) fungus (Golovinomyces cichoracearum) in the infected epidermal cells to activate immunity. However, the mechanism of RPW8.2-induction is not well understood. Here, we identify a G. cichoracearum effector that interacts with RPW8.2, named Gc-RPW8.2 interacting protein 1 (GcR8IP1), by a yeast two-hybrid screen of an Arabidopsis cDNA library. GcR8IP1 physically associated with RPW8.2 with its RING finger domain that is essential and sufficient for the association. GcR8IP1 was secreted and translocated into the nucleus of host cell infected with PM. Association of GcR8IP1 with RPW8.2 led to an increase of RPW8.2 in the nucleus. In turn, the nucleus-localised RPW8.2 promoted the activity of the RPW8.2 promoter, resulting in transcriptional self-amplification of RPW8.2 to boost immunity at infection sites. Additionally, ectopic expression or host-induced gene silencing of GcR8IP1 supported its role as a virulence factor in PM. Altogether, our results reveal a mechanism of RPW8.2-dependent defense strengthening via altered partitioning of RPW8.2 and transcriptional self-amplification triggered by a PM fungal effector, which exemplifies an atypical form of effector-triggered immunity. 
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  4. Porphyry ore deposits, Earth’s most important resources of copper, molybdenum, and rhenium, are strongly associated with felsic magmas showing signs of high-pressure differentiation and are usually found in places with thickened crust (>45 kilometers). This pattern is well-known, but unexplained, and remains an outstanding problem in our understanding of porphyry ore deposit formation. We approach this problem by investigating the oxidation state of magmatic sulfur, which controls the behavior of ore-forming metals during magma differentiation and magmatic-hydrothermal transition. We use sulfur in apatite to reconstruct the sulfur oxidation state in the Gangdese batholith, southern Tibet. We find that magma sulfate content increased abruptly after India-Eurasia collision. Apatite sulfur content and the calculated magma S 6+ /ΣS ratio correlate with whole-rock dysprosium/ytterbium ratio, suggesting that residual garnet, favored in thickened crust, exerts a first-order control on sulfur oxidation in magmatic orogens. Our findings link sulfur oxidation to internal petrogenic processes and imply an intrinsic relationship of magma oxidation with synmagmatic crustal thickening. 
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  5. null (Ed.)