• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.235-240
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• 2015

Zelkova serrata is an important hardwood species for the timber industry in Japan. Tree breeding programs for this species have mainly focused on growth characteristics such as stem diameter (D), tree height (TH), stem form, and branching. In order to fulfill timber industry needs, wood quality improvement should be included in the tree breeding program of this species. In the present study, growth characteristics, such as D and TH, and the stress-wave velocity (SWV), which is highly correlated with Young's modulus of wood, were measured for 20-year-old Z. serrata from eight half-sib families planted in a progeny test site with three different initial spacings. Significant differences in all the measured characteristics were found among the eight half-sib families. The variance components of the half-sib families for D, TH, and SWV were 27.2%, 47.3%, and 33.5%, respectively. These results indicate that all the measured characteristics of this species could be improved by tree breeding programs. In addition, only low correlation coefficients were obtained between the growth characteristics and SWV, indicating that extensive selection on SWV in tree breeding programs may not always lead to a reduction in yield volume.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.164-171
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• 2018

Background: In recent years, the interest in health and safety in the workplace has increased. Agriculture is one of the human work activities with the highest risk indexes. Studies on risk perception of agricultural workers are often referred to as specific risk factors (especially pesticides), but the risk perception plays an important role in preventing every kind of accident and occupational disease. Methods: The aim of this research is to test a new method for understanding the relation between risk perception among farmers and the main risk factors to which they are exposed. A secondary aim is to investigate the influence of training in risk perception in agriculture. The data collection was realized using a questionnaire designed to investigate the risk perception; the questionnaire was given to a sample of 119 agricultural workers in central Italy. Through the use of the "principal components analysis" it was possible to highlight and verify the latent dimensions underlying the collected data in comparison with scales of attitudes. Results: Results show that the highest percentage of strong negative attitude is among the people who have worked for more years, while farmers who have worked for fewer years have a marked positive attitude. Conclusion: The analysis of the questionnaires through the synthetic index method (Rizzi index) showed that agricultural workers involved, in particular the elderly workers, have a negative attitude towards safety; workers are hostile to safety measures if they have not attended special training courses.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.978-989
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• 2021

Allyl isothiocyanate (AITC), as a fumigant, plays an important role in soil control of nematodes, soil-borne pathogens, and weeds, but its effects on soil microorganisms are unclear. In this study, the effects of AITC on microbial diversity and community composition of Capsicum annuum L. soil were investigated through Illumina high-throughput sequencing. The results showed that microbial diversity and community structure were significantly influenced by AITC. AITC reduced the diversity of soil bacteria, stimulated the diversity of the soil fungal community, and significantly changed the structure of fungal community. AITC decreased the relative abundance of dominant bacteria Planctomycetes, Acinetobacter, Pseudodeganella, and RB41, but increased that of Lysobacter, Sphingomonas, Pseudomonas, Luteimonas, Pseudoxanthomonas, and Bacillus at the genera level, while for fungi, Trichoderma, Neurospora, and Lasiodiplodia decreased significantly and Aspergillus, Cladosporium, Fusarium, Penicillium, and Saccharomyces were higher than the control. The correlation analysis suggested cellulase had a significant correlation with fungal operational taxonomic units and there was a significant correlation between cellulase and fungal diversity, while catalase, cellulose, sucrase, and urease were the major contributors in the shift of the community structure. Our results will provide useful information for the use of AITC in the assessment of environmental and ecological security.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.653-658
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• 1992

Crossbred dairy does were fed a roughage diet (IVOMD 56%, N 2.27%) ad libitum, and supplemented with urea-molasses (3% W : W) (UM) at levels on an air dry basis of 1.5% or 3% of liveweight or an iso-energetic, iso-nitrogenous mixture of cottonseed meal and molasses (25 : 75 w : w) (CM). Eight does, four lower-producers and four higher-producers (1.9 and 2.5 kg/day respectively in week 7 of lactation) arranged in two Latin Squares, received each of the four diets for three weeks. Dry matter, digestible organic matter and N intakes were higher for high-producers and high levels of supplement but did not differ between nitrogen sources. Milk production was higher by high-producers; interactions were significant between level of supplement and production group and between level of supplement and N-source, with maximum production by high producers on high levels of CM. The main effects of level of supplement were only significant for production or composition. and total solids; N-source did not have significant effects on liveweight, milk production or composition. We conclude that does of moderate capacity for milk production, receiving a diet of two-thirds moderate quality roughage, one third urea-molasses, will not respond to increased level of supplementation or to replacement of urea with cottonseed meal.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.637-647
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• 2022

A spotted scat, Scatophagus argus, has a high nutritional value and is among Asia's most widely consumed fish species. Thua Thien Hue's consumption market considers this species to be of high economic value and requires protection and conservation of the population. However, the studies on the identification and genetic diversity of S. argus distributed in Vietnam are still lacking. Therefore, mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) gene was utilized to distinguish different populations and investigate the genetic diversity of two populations of S. argus from Tam Giang lagoon, Thua Thien Hue province (n = 31) and Ca Mau province (n = 14). The sequencing results indicated 13 distinct haplotypes among 45 sequences. Five single nucleotide polymorphisms were observed to distinguish Hue spotted scat population. The S. argus population in Ca Mau province was higher haplotype diversity (Hd) and nucleotide diversity (π) than those of Thua Thien Hue province, which demonstrates that there are minor differences between haplotypes. There were genetic distances ranging from 0%-4% within the populations and 6.67% between the two populations. In addition to the sequencing, the comparison of morphology, biology, culture, and the growth rate was sufficient to distinguish the spotted scat S. argus in Thua Thien Hue from Ca Mau.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.101-109
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• 2009

The Hajong are the ancient tribal forest community among the ethnic minorities of the North-East region of Bangladesh. The study was carried out with respect to three income groups highlighting their indigenous knowledge. A total of forty-five households (fifteen from each income groups) were assessed using different participatory appraisals through semi-structured questionnaires. A special type of indigenous knowledge on food habit was explored in the Hajong community, which correspond to the severe dependence on forest resources. They collect their food resources from homestead forest (45%) followed by forest (40%), market and others. They have indigenous hunting procedure to trap the animal in the forest. Twenty three tree species were tremendously planted in their homestead forests which are the very important source of food. Male are highly responsible to collect the food materials from forest as well as other sources.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.311-317
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• 2020

Mushroom has economic, food and medicinal value to a large proportion of human populace. This study assessed the consumption pattern of mushroom species in Southwestern Nigeria. Non-probability sampling method was used to select 20 Local Government Areas (LGAs) from 3 states and four communities were selected purposively from each LGAs. Snow-ball sampling approach was used in selecting 5 respondents from each community, making a total of 400 respondents. Descriptive statistics was used to describe the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents, to compare the differences between the local (wild) and Exotic (cultivated) mushroom Species and to determine the rate at which mushroom substitute is consumed among the mushroom consumers. Logit regression was used to identify the factors influencing mushroom consumption in the study area. Thirty percent of the respondents were aged 41 to 50 years, with mean age of 49.76 years. About 82% had tertiary education, 17.3% earned above N200,000 monthly and 8.8% spent above N6000 monthly on mushroom. Logit regression showed that age (-3.21), household size (-2.17) and medicinal benefits (-2.17) had significant (p<0.01) negative effects on mushroom consumption. Conclusively, mushroom has wide acceptance among the general populace, good for food and medicine; hence, awareness should be created through agricultural policy on the need for mushroom cultivation and consumption in Nigeria.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.96-104
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• 2023

The successful restoration program requires a comprehensive understanding of variables influencing seedling efficiency. Below-ground is hypothesized to have a major impact on seedling performance of species when planted in agriculture, and degraded areas with different types of mulching. This study investigated on Sg. Terla Forest Reserve in Cameron Highlands Pahang, Malaysia. In this study randomized complete block design (RCBD) was used. The excavation method was applied to study the root system development, above, and below ground biomass distributions under different types of mulching: coconut mulching (CM), oil palm mulching (OM), plastic mulching (PM) and control (CK). The root diameter, main root length, lateral root length, root coiling, and root direction toward to sun were recorded. The results in this study indicate that mulching had significant effect on root diameter, main root length, and root distributions among treatments while for lateral root length, root: shoot ratio, dry biomass distributions, and above and below ground biomass did not showed significant effect among treatments. The highest values for root diameter, lateral root length, main root length, root distributions, dry biomass distributions and above and below ground biomass were showed in CM treatments. However 75% of root coiling was observed in seedlings between treatments.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.359-368
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• 2018

A method is proposed for the identification of instantaneous frequencies (IFs) in time-varying structures. The proposed method combines a maximum gradient algorithm and a smoothing operation. The maximum gradient algorithm is designed to extract the wavelet ridges of response signals. The smoothing operation, based on a polynomial curve fitting algorithm and a threshold method, is employed to reduce the effects of random noises. To verify the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method, a numerical example of a signal with two frequency modulated components is investigated and an experimental test on a steel cable with time-varying tensions is also conducted. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can extract IFs from the noisy multi-component signals and practical response signals successfully. In addition, the proposed method can provide a better IF identification results than the standard synchrosqueezing wavelet transform.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.169-177
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• 2005

We developed the one-step strip based on an immunochromatographic (IC) assay for the rapid detection of Listeria spp. Genus-specific monoclonal antibody to flagella of L. monocytogenes was conjugated with 40 nm colloidal gold particles which were prepared in our laboratory. The specificity of the IC strip was tested with pure cultured bacteria. All strains of the genus of Listeria spp. yielded positive reactions and 12 strains of non-Listeria were negative, resulting in a specificity of 100%. L. monocytogenes was artificially inoculated in raw pork macerated with listeria enrichment broth. And then it was 10-fold diluted from $8.7{\times}10^6$ to 8.7 CFU/ml. L. monocytogenes could be detected at a minimum of $8.7{\times}10^5CFU/ml$ before enrichment, $8.7{\times}10^2CFU/ml$ after primary enrichment and 8.7 CFU/ml after secondary enrichment, respectively. These results indicated that the IC strip exhibited high specificity and sensitivity in the detection of Listeria spp.