Nickel stocks and fluxes in a tropical agromining 'metal crop' farming system in Sabah (Malaysia)

Nickel hyperaccumulator plants play a major role in nickel recycling in ultramafic ecosystems, and under agromining the nickel dynamics in the farming system will be affected by removal of nickel-rich biomass. We investigated the biogeochemical cycling of nickel as well as key nutrients in an agromining operation that uses the metal crop Phyllanthus rufuschaneyi in the first tropical metal farm located in Borneo (Sabah, Malaysia). For two years, this study monitored nine 25-m2 plots and collected information on weather, biomass exportation, water, and litter fluxes to the soil. Without harvesting, nickel inputs and outputs had only minor contributions (<1 %) to the total nickel budget in this system. The nickel cycle was mainly driven by internal fluxes, particularly plant uptake, litterfall and throughfall. After two years of cropping, the nickel litter flux corresponded to 50 % of the total nickel stock in the aerial biomass (3.1 g m-2 year-1). Nickel was slowly released from the litter; after 15 months of degradation, 60 % of the initial biomass and the initial nickel quantities were still present in the organic layer. Calcium, phosphorus and potassium budgets in the system were negative without fertilisation. Unlike what is observed for nickel, sustained agromining would thus lead to a strong depletion of calcium stocks if mineral weathering cannot replenish it.

Relative contributions of postural balance mechanisms reveal studying the CoP displacement alone may be incomplete for analysis of challenging standing postures

BACKGROUND

The mechanical consequences of the motor actions used to maintain upright standing balance can be discriminated in two mechanisms: i) moving the center of pressure (CoP) within the base of support (M1); and ii) modifying the whole-body angular momentum (M2). Since the contribution of M2 to the whole-body CoM acceleration increases with postural constraints, a postural analysis focusing only on the CoP trajectory (i.e. M1) could ignore the majority of the control actions in challenging postural tasks. The objective of this study was to determine the contributions of the two postural balance mechanisms across postures with different areas of the base of support.

METHODS

Forty-one healthy young adults (19 females, 22.9 ± 2.9 years old) stood quietly on a forceplate, maintaining four different postures: bipedal, tandem, unipedal and unipedal on a 4-cm wooden bar; each with eyes open and for 60 s. Relative contributions of the two balance postural mechanisms were computed for each posture, in both directions of the horizontal plane.

RESULTS

The posture impacted the mechanisms contributions, where the contribution of M1 decreased between each posture in the mediolateral direction as the area of the base of support was reduced. The contribution of M2 in the mediolateral direction was not negligible (about 1/3) in tandem and unipedal postures and became dominant (nearly 90% on average) in the most challenging unipedal posture.

SIGNIFICANCE

This suggests the contribution of M2 should not be neglected for the analysis of postural balance, and particularly in challenging standing postures.

The X-ray fluorescence screening of multiple elements in herbarium specimens from the Neotropical region reveals new records of metal accumulation in plants

Plants have developed a diversity of strategies to take up and store essential metals in order to colonize various types of soils including mineralized soils. Yet, our knowledge of the capacity of plant species to accumulate metals is still fragmentary across the plant kingdom. In this study, we have used the X-Ray Fluorescence technology to analyze metal concentration in a wide diversity of species of the Neotropical flora that was not extensively investigated so far. In total, we screened more than 11 000 specimens representing about 5000 species from herbaria in Paris and Cuba. Our study provides a large overview of the accumulation of metals such as manganese, zinc and nickel in the Neotropical flora. We report 30 new nickel hyperaccumulating species from Cuba, including the first records in the families Connaraceae, Melastomataceae, Polygonaceae, Santalaceae and Urticaceae. We also identified the first species from this region of the world that can be considered as manganese hyperaccumulators in the genera Lomatia (Proteaceae), Calycogonium (Melastomataceae), Ilex (Aquifoliaceae), Morella (Myricaceae) and Pimenta (Myrtaceae). Finally, we report the first zinc hyperaccumulator, Rinorea multivenosa (Violaceae), from the Amazonas region. The identification of species able to accumulate high amounts of metals will become instrumental to support the development of phytotechnologies in order to limit the impact of soil metal pollution in this region of the world.

Stepping boundary of external force-controlled perturbations of varying durations: Comparison of experimental data and model simulations

This study investigated the stepping boundary - the force that can be resisted without stepping - for force-controlled perturbations of different durations. Twenty-two healthy young adults (19-37 years old) were instructed to try not to step in response to 86 different force/time combinations of forward waist-pulls. The forces at which 50% of subjects stepped (F₅₀) were identified for each tested perturbation durations. Results showed that F₅₀ decreased hyperbolically when the perturbation's duration increased and converged toward a constant value (about 10%BW) for longer perturbations (over 1500 ms). The effect of perturbation duration was critical for the shortest perturbations (less than 1 s). In parallel, a simple function was proposed to estimate this stepping boundary. Considering the dynamics of a linear inverted pendulum + foot model and simple balance recovery reactions, we could express the maximum pulling force that can be withstood without stepping as a simple function of the perturbation duration. When used with values of the main model parameters determined experimentally, this function replicated adequately the experimental results. This study demonstrates for the first time that perturbation duration has a major influence on the outcomes of compliant perturbations such as force-controlled pulls. The stepping boundary corresponds to a constant perturbation force-duration product and is largely explained by only two parameters: the reaction time and the displacement of the center of pressure within the functional base of support. Future work should investigate pathological populations and additional parameters characterizing the perturbation time-profile such as the time derivative of the perturbation.

A simplified marker set to define the center of mass for stability analysis in dynamic situations

The extrapolated center of mass (XCoM), a valuable tool to assess balance stability, involves defining the whole body center of mass (CoMWB). However, accurate three-dimensional estimation of the CoMWB is time consuming, a severe limitation in certain applications. In this study, twenty-four subjects (young and elderly, male and female) performed three different balance tasks: quiet standing, gait and balance recovery. Three different models, based on a segmental method, were used to estimate the three-dimensional CoMWB absolute position during these movements: a reference model based on 38 markers, a simplified 13-marker model and a single marker (sacral) model. CoMWB and XCoM estimations from the proposed simplified model came closer to the reference model than estimations from the sacral marker model. It remained accurate for dynamic tasks, where the sacral marker model proved inappropriate. The simplified model proposed here yields accurate three-dimensional estimation of both the CoMWB and the XCoM with a limited number of markers. Importantly, using this model would reduce the experimental and post-processing times for future balance studies assessing dynamic stability in humans.