Because of its smaller condensate departure size, jumping-droplet condensation on superhydrophobic surfaces provides better heat transfer performance than does regular dropwise condensation. As the jumping mechanism is gravity independent, the effects of surface orientation on jumping-droplet condensation were previously ignored. Here, with the help of long-term condensation experiments on different surface orientations, it is shown that jumping-droplet condensers are dramatically enhanced when gravitational shedding complements the jumping. The analysis presented here can be useful in designing more efficient condensers.

Over the past decade, synthetic trees have been engineered to mimic the transpiration cycle of natural plants, but the leaves are prone to dry out beneath a critical relative humidity. Here, we create large-area synthetic leaves whose transpiration process is remarkably stable over a wide range of humidities, even without synthetic stomatal chambers atop the nanopores of the leaf. While the water menisci cannot initially withstand the Kelvin stress of the subsaturated air, they self-stabilized by locally concentrating vapor within the top layers of nanopores that have dried up. Transpiration rates were found to vary nonmonotonically with the ambient humidity because of the tradeoff of dry air increasing the retreat length of the menisci. It is our hope that these findings will encourage the development of large-area synthetic trees that exhibit excellent stability and high throughput for water-harvesting applications.

Cuttings from mature chestnut (Castanea spp.) trees are very difficult to root, whereas juvenile or etiolated cuttings root easily. The HPLC chromatograms from mature cuttings consistently showed two well-defined peaks that were absent from juvenile or etiolated cuttings. The compounds responsible for these two peaks were isolated and identified as derivatives of ellagic acid, 3,3',4-tri-O-methylellagic acid (compound 1) and 3,4,4'-tri-O-methylellagic acid (compound II). Compound I significantly inhibited rooting as measured by the bean test; a concentration of 3.0 x 10(-5) M caused a 32% inhibition in number of roots formed compared with controls grown in 10(-5) M IAA. When compound I was mixed with an equal quantity of IAA, the rooting activity of the auxin was reduced by 31.5%. An insufficient amount of compound II was available for the bean assay.

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