| 1. |
- Rani, Raffaele, et al.
(author)
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Effects of bud-flushing strategies on tree growth
- 2018
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In: Tree Physiology. - : Oxford University Press. - 0829-318X .- 1758-4469. ; 38:9, s. 1384-1393
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Allocation of carbohydrates between competing organs is fundamental to plant development, growth and productivity. Carbohydrates are synthesized in mature leaves and distributed via the phloem vasculature to developing buds where they are consumed to produce new biomass. The distribution and mass-allocation processes within the plant remain poorly understood and may involve complex feedbacks between different plant functions, with implications for the emergent structure of the plant. Here, we investigate how the order in which dormant buds are flushed affects the development of tree size and reproductive output during the first 20 years of growth in full light and shaded canopy environments. We report the following findings: (i) Bud-flushing strategies strongly affect the temporal dynamics of height, mass and the size of reproduction pool, as well as the resulting architectures. (ii) Bud-flushing strategies affect tree growth by altering the rate of growth and final size of trees. (iii) No single bud-flushing strategy performs best when both the size and allocation for reproduction of the resulting trees are compared. However, we observe that the strategy that optimizes the net carbon gain for the entire tree architecture always results in a high reproduction output. (iv) Branch turnover and meristem regeneration enhance the performance of certain strategies with respect to the measured quantities. These results highlight the importance of employing generic models of architecture (i.e., non-species-specific) to identify general mechanisms of carbon allocation and the spatial distribution of newly formed biomass in growing trees.
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| 2. |
- Rani, Raffaele, et al.
(author)
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Killing tensors and conformai Killing tensors from conformal Killing vectors
- 2003
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In: Classical and quantum gravity. - : IOP Publishing. - 0264-9381 .- 1361-6382. ; 20:11, s. 1929-1942
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Koutras has proposed some methods to construct reducible proper conformal Killing tensors and Killing tensors (which are, in general, irreducible) when a pair of orthogonal conformal Killing vectors exist in a given space. We give the completely general result demonstrating that this severe restriction of orthogonality is unnecessary. In addition, we correct and extend some results concerning Killing tensors constructed from a single conformal Killing vector. A number of examples demonstrate that it is possible to construct a much larger class of reducible proper conformal Killing tensors and Killing tensors than permitted by the Koutras algorithms. In particular, by showing that all conformal Killing tensors are reducible in conformally flat spaces, we have a method of constructing all conformal Killing tensors, and hence all the Killing tensors (which will in general be irreducible) of conformally flat spaces using their conformal Killing vectors.
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| 3. |
- Rani, Raffaele
(author)
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Proteins at interfaces : modelling of the residence time effect and experimental studies
- 2002
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The residence time effect plays an important role in desorption phenomena at solid liquid interfaces. The objective of this work is to set up simple models to describe the dynamics of both adsorption and desorption of proteins on a solid surface. The main feature of such a mode] is to account for the capability of a molecule to change conformation through a single step process. The kinetics of desorption and the residence time effects are then studied by comparison of experimental data to the ideal scenario provided by the model. Data collected by means of off-null ellipsometry were used to illustrate the different desorption behaviours depending on the properties of the surface.Furthermore we introduce a method to use the Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) for online monitoring of adsorption phenomena. We also show that porous gold electrodes improve the sensitivity of the QCM upon measuring the binding of antigens to antibodies. Real time measurement lie at the basis of the understanding and description of kinetic processes.
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