Control of Rhizoctonia stem and stolon canker of potato by harvest methods and enhancing mycophagous soil mesofauna

Rhizoctonia solani (AG-3) is a soil-borne plant pathogen that causes canker on potato stems an, stolons, resulting in a reduced quantity and quality of the tuber yield. Two approaches for non. chemical control of stem and stolon canker in potato, caused by soil-borne inoculum, were investigated.Two field experiments were conducted to investigate whether harvest methods of potato affect soil infestation with R. solani. Soil infestation was estimated on the basis of stem infections of potato in the subsequent year. Immature-crop-harvesting lowered the disease severity in the next crop compared with haulm pulling and chemical haulm killing. However, this harvest method was only successfull in controlling the disease when the formation of sclerotia did not start before harvest and the crop debris was incorporated into the soil with a rotary hoe.Control of Rhizoctonia stem and stolon infections by mycophagous soil animals was investigated in experiments under controlled conditions (growth chambers) and in field experiments. The mycophagous soil mesofauna was equally effective in reducing of stem infections at 10 and 15 °C, and they were effective over a broad range of soil moistures. Under controlled conditions, adding dried fresh rape material to the soil enhanced the populations of the springtail Folsomia fimetaria and the nematode Aphelenchus avenae. F. fimetaria reduced stem canker under a broad range of conditions, but when rape was added to the soil at pH-KCl 6.2, its suppressive effect disappeared completely, probably due to the presence of alternative food sources.In field experiments, oats grown as green manure crop or farmyard manure plus white mustard as green manure crop enhanced the populations of the mycophagous soil fauna and reduced the severity of Rhizoctonia stem and stolon canker. Oats especially increased the populations of mycophagous nematodes, whereas farmyard manure plus white mustard mainly enhanced the populations of mycophagous springtails

Development of DFSI using Fuzzy Logic to Analyze Risk Levels of Driving Activity

The objective of this study is to develop a Driving Fatigue Strain Index using fuzzy logic to analyze the risk levels of driving activity among road users. Driving fatigue is always related to the driving activity and has been identified as one of the vital contributors to the road accidents and fatalities in Malaysia. Therefore, the present paper introduces the use of fuzzy logic for the development of strain index to provide the systematic analysis and propose an appropriate solution in minimizing the number of road accidents and fatalities. The development of strain index is based on the six risk factors associated with driving fatigue; muscle activity, heart rate, hand grip pressure force, seat pressure distribution, whole-body vibration, and driving duration. The data is collected for all the risk factors and consequently, the three conditions or risk levels are defined as “safe”, “slightly unsafe”, and “unsafe”. A membership function is defined for each fuzzy conditions. IF-THEN rules were used to define the input and output variables which correspond to physical measures. This index is a reliable advisory tool for providing analysis and solutions to driving fatigue problem, which constitutes the first effort toward the minimization of road accidents and fatalities

The rank reversal problem in multi-criteria decision making : a literature review

Despite the importance of multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques for constructing effective decision models, there are many criticisms due to the occurrence of a problem called rank reversal. Nevertheless, there is a lack of a systematic literature review on this important subject which involves different methods. This study reviews the pertinent literature on rank reversal, based on 130 related articles published from 1980 to 2015 in international journals, which were gathered and analyzed according to the following perspectives: multicriteria technique, year and journal in which the papers were published, co-authorship network, rank reversal types, and research goal. Thus our survey provides recommendations for future research, besides useful information and knowledge regarding rank reversal in the MCDM field