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Magneto-rheological (MR) dampers are a promising type of semi-active control device for various dynamic systems. Recently, low-cost MR dampers without any sealing structure have been required. Motivated by the desire to overcome the need for the costly dynamic seals of conventional MR dampers, a new type of metal foam MR damper is proposed in this study and the dynamic response performance is also investigated. The metal foam is firmly adhered to a working cylinder to store the unexcited MR fluids. In the action of a magnetic field, MR fluids will be extracted from the metal foam and fill up the shear gap to produce the MR effect. Three time parameters related to response time are introduced to further describe the dynamic response process. The results show that, due to the period required for extracting the MR fluids out from the metal foam, the time to produce the damper force of the metal foam MR damper is longer than for conventional fluid-filled MR dampers. The response time of the metal foam MR damper will change with different currents and shear rates. Given a constant shear rate, in a small range of currents (0–1.5 A), the response time decreases rapidly as the operating current increases; however, there is a slower change rate in larger ranges. To evaluate the effect of shear rate on response time, shear rates ranging from 2 to 10 s−1 are tested, and the results demonstrate that with increasing shear rates the response time decreases.

Geminiviruses are plant viruses with limited coding capacity. Geminivirus-encoded proteins are traditionally identified by applying a 10-kDa arbitrary threshold; however, it is increasingly clear that small proteins play relevant roles in biological systems, which calls for the reconsideration of this criterion. Here, we show that geminiviral genomes contain additional ORFs. Using tomato yellow leaf curl virus, we demonstrate that some of these small ORFs are expressed during the infection, and that the encoded proteins display specific subcellular localizations. We prove that the largest of these additional ORFs, which we name V3, is required for full viral infection, and that the V3 protein localizes in the Golgi apparatus and functions as an RNA silencing suppressor. These results imply that the repertoire of geminiviral proteins can be expanded, and that getting a comprehensive overview of the molecular plant-geminivirus interactions will require the detailed study of small ORFs so far neglected.

Post-transcriptional RNA modification occurs on all types of RNA and plays a vital role in regulating every aspect of RNA function. Thanks to the development of high-throughput sequencing technologies, transcriptome-wide profiling of RNA modifications has been made possible. With the accumulation of a large number of high-throughput datasets, bioinformatics approaches have become increasing critical for unraveling the epitranscriptome. We review here the recent progress in bioinformatics approaches for deciphering the epitranscriptomes, including epitranscriptome data analysis techniques, RNA modification databases, disease-association inference, general functional annotation, and studies on RNA modification site prediction. We also discuss the limitations of existing approaches and offer some future perspectives.

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