Crown roots are the main components of the fibrous root system in rice (Oryza sativa). WOX11, a WUSCHEL-related homeobox gene specifically expressed in the emerging crown root meristem, is a key regulator in crown root development. However, the nature of WOX11 function in crown root development has remained elusive. Here, we identified a rice AP2/ERF protein, ERF3, which interacts with WOX11 and was expressed in crown root initials and during crown root growth. Functional analysis revealed that ERF3 was essential for crown root development and acts in auxin-and cytokinin-responsive gene expression. Downregulation of ERF3 in wox11 mutants produced a more severe root phenotype. Also, increased expression of ERF3 could partially complement wox11, indicating that the two genes functioned cooperatively to regulate crown root development. ERF3 and WOX11 shared a common target, the cytokinin-responsive gene RR2. The expression of ERF3 and WOX11 only partially overlapped, underlining a spatio-temporal control of RR2 expression and crown root development. Furthermore, ERF3-regulated RR2 expression was involved in crown root initiation, while the ERF3/WOX11 interaction likely repressed RR2 during crown root elongation. These results define a mechanism regulating gene expression involved in cytokinin signaling during different stages of crown root development in rice.

Members of the aquaporin (AQP) family have been suggested to transport aluminum (Al) in plants; however, the Al form transported by AQPs and the roles of AQPs in Al tolerance remain elusive. Here we report that NIP1;2, a plasma membrane-localized member of the Arabidopsis nodulin 26-like intrinsic protein (NIP) subfamily of the AQP family, facilitates Al-malate transport from the root cell wall into the root symplasm, with subsequent Al xylem loading and root-toshoot translocation, which are critical steps in an internal Al tolerance mechanism in Arabidopsis. We found that NIP1;2 transcripts are expressed mainly in the root tips, and that this expression is enhanced by Al but not by other metal stresses. Mutations in NIP1;2 lead to hyperaccumulation of toxic Al 3+ in the root cell wall, inhibition of root-to-shoot Al translocation, and a significant reduction in Al tolerance. NIP1;2 facilitates the transport of Al-malate, but not Al 3+ ions, in both yeast and Arabidopsis. We demonstrate that the formation of the Al-malate complex in the root tip apoplast is a prerequisite for NIP1;2-mediated Al removal from the root cell wall, and that this requires a functional root malate exudation system mediated by the Al-activated malate transporter, ALMT1. Taken together, these findings reveal a critical linkage between the previously identified Al exclusion mechanism based on root malate release and an internal Al tolerance mechanism identified here through the coordinated function of NIP1;2 and ALMT1, which is required for Al removal from the root cell wall, root-to-shoot Al translocation, and overall Al tolerance in Arabidopsis.aquaporin | nodulin 26-like protein | aluminum tolerance | organic acid exudation | malate

Semantic 3D mapping can be used for many applications such as robot navigation and virtual interaction. In recent years, there has been great progress in semantic segmentation and geometric 3D mapping. However, it is still challenging to combine these two tasks for accurate and largescale semantic mapping from images. In the paper, we propose an incremental and (near) real-time semantic mapping system. A 3D scrolling occupancy grid map is built to represent the world, which is memory and computationally efficient and bounded for large scale environments. We utilize the CNN segmentation as prior prediction and further optimize 3D grid labels through a novel CRF model. Superpixels are utilized to enforce smoothness and form robust P N high order potential. An efficient mean field inference is developed for the graph optimization. We evaluate our system on the KITTI dataset and improve the segmentation accuracy by 10% over existing systems.

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HighlightThis study demonstrates that OsIG1 plays an essential role in the regulation of empty-glume identity, floral organ number control and female gametophyte development in rice.

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Goal: The use of mobile game-based learning with a mobile app in higher education aims to provide an interesting learning method which is acceptable and workable for university students in different majors and different gender to improve their English vocabulary acquisition. Objective: To analyze how, and to what extent, mobile game-based learning influences the participants’ learning performance and learning motivational effects. Experimental Setting: A mobile application game was employed to learn English vocabulary for a hundred university freshmen students from one private university in Northern Taiwan during the spring semester, 2016. Method: A pre-questionnaire and pre-test were carried out before the participants started using the app game for learning. A post-test and post-questionnaire were completed and analyzed after the 2-week experiment. Results: This paper reveals that mobile game-based learning is a workable and acceptable learning method for both female and male university students from different faculties. The results indicate that language teachers could benefit from collecting mobile educational applications and implementing the teaching via technology model into ubiquitous learning activities. The improvement between the pre-test and post-test showed the students’ positive learning performance.

Abstract. Near-duplicates are abundant in short text databases. Detecting and eliminating them is of great importance. SimFinder proposed in this paper is a fast algorithm to identify all near-duplicates in large-scale short text databases. An ad hoc term weighting scheme is employed to measure each term's discriminative ability. A certain number of terms with higher weights are seletect as features for each short text. SimFinder generates several fingerprints for each text, and only texts with at least one fingerprint in common are compared with each other. An optimization procedure is employed in SimFinder to make it more efficient. Experiments indicate that SimFinder is an effective solution for short text duplicate detection with almost linear time and storage complexity. Both precision and recall of SimFinder are promising.