[1] This paper documents a global Bayesian variational inversion of CO 2 surface fluxes during the period . Weekly fluxes are estimated on a 3.75°× 2.5°(longitudelatitude) grid throughout the 21 years. The assimilated observations include 128 station records from three large data sets of surface CO 2 mixing ratio measurements. A Monte Carlo approach rigorously quantifies the theoretical uncertainty of the inverted fluxes at various space and time scales, which is particularly important for proper interpretation of the inverted fluxes. Fluxes are evaluated indirectly against two independent CO 2 vertical profile data sets constructed from aircraft measurements in the boundary layer and in the free troposphere. The skill of the inversion is evaluated by the improvement brought over a simple benchmark flux estimation based on the observed atmospheric growth rate. Our error analysis indicates that the carbon budget from the inversion should be more accurate than the a priori carbon budget by 20% to 60% for terrestrial fluxes aggregated at the scale of subcontinental regions in the Northern Hemisphere and over a year, but the inversion cannot clearly distinguish between the regional carbon budgets within a continent. On the basis of the independent observations, the inversion is seen to improve the fluxes compared to the benchmark: the atmospheric simulation of CO 2 with the Bayesian inversion method is better by about 1 ppm than the benchmark in the free troposphere, despite possible systematic transport errors. The inversion achieves this improvement by changing the regional fluxes over land at the seasonal and at the interannual time scales. Citation: Chevallier, F., et al. (2010), CO 2 surface fluxes at grid point scale estimated from a global 21 year reanalysis of atmospheric measurements,

New automated observation systems for use in passenger aircraft to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and other trace species have been developed and are described in this paper. The Continuous CO 2 Measuring Equipment (CME) is composed mainly of a nondispersive infrared analyzer, a datalogger, and two calibration cylinders for in situ CO 2 measurements. The Automatic Air Sampling Equipment (ASE), on the other hand, is designed for flask sampling; the instrument, connected to a metal bellows pump, is made up of a specially designed control board and can accommodate 12 flasks. The CME platform can be used to conduct high-frequency measurements of CO 2 for obtaining a detailed spatial observation over a wide area, while ASE, despite the limited flight frequency, can provide useful distributions not only of CO 2 but also various trace gas species, as well as their isotopic ratios. ASE and CME are installed on the racks in the forward cargo compartment of the aircraft and the air bypass intake is mounted on the airconditioning duct upstream of the recirculation fan. Both sets of sampling equipment are automatically controlled through input of relevant flight parameters from the aircraft data system. Their deployment in a Boeing 747-400 aircraft was approved by the aviation regulatory agencies in the United States and Japan through issuance of the supplemental type certificate (STC), while the approval for installation of CME in a Boeing 777-200ER was also obtained via STC. First measurement results of CO 2 variations obtained by CME and ASE deployed on Japan Airlines (JAL) aircraft are reported herein.

How microscopic chirality is reflected in macroscopic scale to form various chiral shapes, such as straight helicoids and spiral ribbons, and how the degree of macroscopic chirality can be controlled are a focus of studies on the shape formation of many biomaterials and supramolecular systems. This article investigates both experimentally and theoretically how the chiral arrangement of liquid crystal mesogens in twist-nematic-elastomer films induces the formation of helicoids and spiral ribbons because of the coupling between the liquid crystalline order and the elasticity. It is also shown that the pitch of the formed ribbons can be tuned by temperature variation. The results of this study will facilitate the understanding of physics for the shape formation of chiral materials and the designing of new structures on basis of microscopic chirality.liquid crystal elastomers | chiral imprinting R ecent researches have revealed that chirality plays a critical role in controlling the shape of self-assembled supramolecular aggregates. A range of chiral shapes, including tubes with "barber-pole" markings, spiral ribbons (with cylindrical curvature and helical central line), and helicoids (with Gaussian saddle-like curvature and straight central line), have been observed in a rich variety of biological materials and their synthetic analogues. These materials include several amphiphiles (1-3), peptides (4-7), diacetylenic lipids (8, 9), gemini surfactants (10, 11), and multicomponent mixtures in bile (12, 13). Such aggregates often become bilayers, and the bilayer membranes form tubules, spiral ribbons, or helicoids in contrast to the normal expectation that the minimum energy state of the bilayers would be flat, or be large spherical vesicles with the minimum curvature. In addition, the correlation between material characteristics and the macroscopic shape of chiral aggregates is markedly complicated. For example, mixed bilayers of saturated and diacetylenic phospholipids change their shape between micron-scale cylindrical tubules, spiral ribbons, or nanometer-scale tubules, in response to temperature variation (14). Charged gemini surfactants with chiral counterions show a transition between spiral ribbons and helicoids as a function of molecular chain length (10). Many theoretical studies have been reported to explain what determines the size and shape of tubules, helicoids, and spiral ribbons (10,(15)(16)(17)(18).In this article, we will show, both experimentally and theoretically, how a flat twist-nematic-elastomer (TNE) film when subjected to temperature change can easily achieve the goal of shape selection between helicoids and spiral ribbons. Nematic elastomers (NEs) are a unique class of materials (19-23). Formed by cross-linking liquid crystalline polymers, NEs possess both the elastic properties of rubbers and the orientational properties of liquid crystals. The combination of these two properties makes the shape of NEs very sensitive to external stimuli. In this article, we will focus on NE films in which the...

[1] This article introduces an international regional experiment, East Asian Regional Experiment 2005 (EAREX 2005), carried out in March-April 2005 in the east Asian region, as one of the first phase regional experiments under the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) project, and discusses some outstanding features of aerosol characteristics and its direct radiative forcing in the east Asian region, with some comparison with the results obtained in another ABC early phase regional experiment, ABC Maldives Monsoon Experiment (APMEX) conducted in the south Asian region. Time series of aerosol optical thickness (AOT), single scattering albedo (SSA), aerosol extinction cross section profile and CO concentration shows that air pollutants and mineral dust were transported every 5 to 7 days in the EAREX region to produce SSA values at wavelength of 700 nm from 0.86 to 0.96 and large clear-sky shortwave forcing efficiency at 500 nm from 60 W m À2 to 90 W m À2 , though there are some unexplained inconsistencies depending on the evaluation method. The simulated whole-sky total forcing in the EAREX region is À1 to À2 W m À2 at TOA and À2 to À10 W m À2 at surface in March 2005 which is smaller in magnitude than in the APMEX region, mainly because of large cloud fraction in this region (0.70 at Gosan versus 0.51 at Hanimadhoo in the ISCCP total cloud fraction). We suggest there may be an underestimation of the forcing due to overestimation of the simulated cloudiness and aerosol scale height. On the other hand, the possible error in the simulated surface albedo may cause an overestimation of the magnitude of the forcing over the land area. We also propose simple formulae for shortwave radiative forcing to understand the role of aerosol parameters and surface condition to determine the aerosol forcing. Such simple formulae are useful to check the consistency among the observed quantities.

[1] Because very few measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) are available in the tropics, estimates of surface CO 2 fluxes in tropical regions are beset with considerable uncertainties. To improve estimates of tropical terrestrial fluxes, atmospheric CO 2 inversion was performed using passenger aircraft based measurements of the Comprehensive Observation Network for Trace gases by Airliner (CONTRAIL) project in addition to the surface measurement data set of GLOBALVIEW-CO 2 . Regional monthly fluxes at the earth's surface were estimated using the Bayesian synthesis approach focusing on the period 2006-2008 using the Nonhydrostatic Icosahedral Atmospheric Model-based Transport Model (NICAM-TM). By adding the aircraft to the surface data, the posterior flux errors were greatly reduced; specifically, error reductions of up to 64% were found for tropical Asia regions. This strong impact is closely related to efficient vertical transport in the tropics. The optimized surface fluxes using the CONTRAIL data were evaluated by comparing the simulated atmospheric CO 2 distributions with independent aircraft measurements of the Civil Aircraft for the Regular Investigation of the atmosphere Based on an Instrument Container (CARIBIC) project. The inversion with the CONTRAIL data yields the global carbon sequestration rates of 2.22 AE 0.28 Pg C yr À1 for the terrestrial biosphere and 2.24 AE 0.27 Pg C yr À1 for the oceans (the both are adjusted by riverine input of CO 2 ). For the first time the CONTRAIL CO 2 measurements were used in an inversion system to identify the areas of greatest impact in terms of reducing flux uncertainties.

The D-mannose/L-galactose pathway for the biosynthesis of vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid; AsA) has greatly improved the understanding of this indispensable compound in plants, where it plays multifunctional roles. However, it is yet to be proven whether the same pathway holds for all the different organs of plants, especially the fruit-bearing plants, at different stages of development. Micro-Tom was used here to elucidate the mechanisms of AsA accumulation and regulation in tomato fruits. The mRNA expression of the genes in the D-mannose/L-galactose pathway were inversely correlated with increasing AsA content of Micro-Tom fruits during ripening. Feeding L-[6-14C]AsA to Micro-Tom plants revealed that the bulk of the label from AsA accumulated in the source leaf was transported to the immature green fruits, and the rate of translocation decreased as ripening progressed. L-Galactose feeding, but neither D-galacturonate nor L-gulono-1,4-lactone, enhanced the content of AsA in immature green fruit. On the other hand, L-galactose and D-galacturonate, but not L-gulono-1,4-lactone, resulted in an increase in the AsA content of red ripened fruits. Crude extract prepared from insoluble fractions of green and red fruits showed D-galacturonate reductase- and aldonolactonase-specific activities, the antepenultimate and penultimate enzymes, respectively, in the D-galacturonate pathway, in both fruits. Taken together, the present findings demonstrated that tomato fruits could switch between different sources for AsA supply depending on their ripening stages. The translocation from source leaves and biosynthesis via the D-mannose/L-galactose pathway are dominant sources in immature fruits, while the alternative D-galacturonate pathway contributes to AsA accumulation in ripened Micro-Tom fruits.

The open reading frame alr1585 of Anabaena sp. strain PCC 7120 encodes a heme-dependent peroxidase (Anabaena peroxidase [AnaPX]) belonging to the novel DyP-type peroxidase family (EC 1.11.1.X). We cloned and heterologously expressed the active form of the enzyme in Escherichia coli. The purified enzyme was a 53-kDa tetrameric protein with a pI of 3.68, a low pH optima (pH 4.0), and an optimum reaction temperature of 35°C. Biochemical characterization revealed an iron protoporphyrin-containing heme peroxidase with a broad specificity for aromatic substrates such as guaiacol, 4-aminoantipyrine and pyrogallol. , respectively. In contrast, the decolorization activity of AnaPX toward azo dyes was relatively low but was significantly enhanced 2-to ϳ50-fold in the presence of the natural redox mediator syringaldehyde. The specificity and catalytic efficiency for hydrogen donors and synthetic dyes show the potential application of AnaPX as a useful alternative of horseradish peroxidase or fungal DyPs. To our knowledge, this study represents the only extensive report in which a bacterial DyP has been tested in the biotransformation of synthetic dyes.

We have investigated the thermally induced bending deformation of nematic elastomers with hybrid alignment (HNEs) where the director continuously rotates by 90 (from planar alignment to vertical alignment) between the top and bottom surfaces. The flat specimen of nematic gel in the preparation state exhibits a considerable bending when allowed to deswell to the dry state. The curvature of the dried elastomer film markedly depends on temperature. The curvature in the nematic state increases with heating, and the film apparently becomes flat at a certain temperature. Further heating induces the bending in the opposite direction. In the high-temperature isotropic state, the curvature is independent of temperature. This bending deformation is thermally reversible. We successfully interpret the temperature dependence of curvature for the HNEs assuming a linear variation of strain in the thickness direction on the basis of the thermally uniaxial deformation of the nematic elastomers with globally planar or vertical alignment. We also conduct a nume- rical simulation on the basis of a nonlinear elasticity model to reproduce the observation. The simulation using the material parameters that are almost identical with the corresponding experimental values explains the phenomenon and demonstrates the stress and strain distribution in the curled HNEs