Only two macroscopic parameters are needed to describe the mechanical properties of linear elastic solids, i.e. the Poisson's ratio and Young's modulus. Correspondingly, there should be two microscopic parameters to determine the mechanical properties of material if the macroscopic mechanical properties of linear elastic solids are derived from the microscopic level. Enlightened by this idea, a multiscale mechanical model for material, the virtual multi-dimensional internal bonds (VMIB) model, is proposed by incorporating a shear bond into the virtual internal bond (VIB) model. By this modification, the VMIB model associates the macro mechanical properties of material with the microscopic mechanical properties of discrete structure and the corresponding relationship between micro and macro parameters is derived. The tensor quality of the energy density function, which contains coordinate vector, is mathematically proved. From the point of view of VMIB, the macroscopic nonlinear behaviors of material could be attributed to the evolution of virtual bond distribution density induced by the imposed deformation. With this theoretical hypothesis, as an application example, a uniaxial compressive failure of brittle material is simulated. Good agreement between the experimental results and the simulated ones is found.KEY WORDS virtual multi-dimensional internal bond, material property dimensionality, multiscale modeling, molecular dynamics, virtual internal bond
BackgroundThe pine tip moth, Rhyacionia leptotubula (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) is one of the most destructive forestry pests in Yunnan Province, China. Despite its importance, less is known regarding all aspects of this pest. Understanding the genetic information of it is essential for exploring the specific traits at the molecular level. Thus, we here sequenced the transcriptome of R. leptotubula with high-throughput Illumina sequencing.Methodology/Principal FindingsIn a single run, more than 60 million sequencing reads were generated. De novo assembling was performed to generate a collection of 46,910 unigenes with mean length of 642 bp. Based on Blastx search with an E-value cut-off of 10−5, 22,581 unigenes showed significant similarities to known proteins from National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) non-redundant (Nr) protein database. Of these annotated unigenes, 10,360, 6,937 and 13,894 were assigned to Gene Ontology (GO), Clusters of Orthologous Group (COG), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) databases, respectively. A total of 5,926 unigenes were annotated with domain similarity derived functional information, of which 55 and 39 unigenes respectively encoding the insecticide resistance related enzymes, cytochrome P450 and carboxylesterase. Using the transcriptome data, 47 unigenes belonging to the typical “stress” genes of heat shock protein (Hsp) family were retrieved. Furthermore, 1,450 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) were detected; 3.09% of the unigenes contained SSRs. Large numbers of SSR primer pairs were designed and out of randomly verified primer pairs 80% were successfully yielded amplicons.Conclusions/SignificanceA large of putative R. leptotubula transcript sequences has been obtained from the deep sequencing, which extensively increases the comprehensive and integrated genomic resources of this pest. This large-scale transcriptome dataset will be an important information platform for promoting our investigation of the molecular mechanisms from various aspects in this species.
Insects in flight achieve the highest metabolism rates and wing beat frequency known in the animal kingdom, but how they do this is not fully understood. Here, we demonstrate the structure and arrangement of flight muscles in the thorax of Spodoptera frugiperda Smith & Abbot (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). Dorsoventral direct flight muscles are stronger and more complicated than dorsoventral indirect flight muscles, which may be important for the moth to swiftly control the trajectory. The abundance of giant mitochondria and the extensive tracheolar system in flight muscle are two prominent features that are well adapted to the special requirements of flight. Parameters of flight muscle and flight capacity were lower in young females, and then increased with time and peaked in middle-aged females. Mating accelerated the deterioration of the structure and function of flight muscles. Virgin females showed lower ovarian development rate but higher flight capacity than mated females. Further analysis found that female flight capacity was significantly negatively correlated to her fecundity, suggesting a trade-off between flight and reproduction. The resource allocation to flight and egg production may be the result of a balance between the intensity of natural and sexual selection on both traits.
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