The Characteristics of Urban Forests as Restorative Environments with the use of the Perceived Restorativeness Scale: focusing on the Hongneung Experimental Forest, Seoul, South Korea

The aim of this empirical study of Hongneung Experimental Forest (HEF) was to determine how urban forests in residential areas are being used as restorative environments. A survey (n = 232) based on the Perceived Restorativeness Scale was conducted to analyse how each element of the scale differed based on the user’s characteristics and to identify the relationship between use patterns and psychological restorativeness. Analysis showed that HEF played a role as a restorative environment in a residential area. The extent of stay received the highest score (6.35), followed by being away (5.97), fascination (5.59), and compatibility (5.47), whereas legibility (4.81) received a relatively low score. The differences in psychological restorativeness based on sex, age, visit frequency, and duration of stay were statistically significant. In particular, the psychological restorativeness for housewives and the elderly was greater than that for men. The greater the frequency of regular visits (e.g., 1~2 times per year), the more likely the visitor will stay for approximately 3h. In the midst of social demand for the restorative environments of urban forests that are accessible and available in everyday life, this study is significant in that it examined the effectiveness of urban forests as restorative environments and presented empirical directions from the visitor’s perspective for the planning of urban therapeutic spaces. However, there is a limit to generalizing the psychological restorativeness of urban forests with just the HEF as an example; therefore, future research is warranted to comparatively analyse various spaces

Editorial introduction / Overview: Special Issues on the horizontal of research and methodologies on Sustainability in Asia

The eight papers in this special issue touched a variety of issues and took many approaches to deal with the new sustainability problems in East Asia. The cities and regions being introduced in mainland and Taiwan in China and Korea are good representatives of those areas largely affected by the physical and social transformation in the course of urbanization. The authors have explored the related problems from a wide range of perspectives, including urban development, environment-friendly planning, eco-tourism, community development, and cross-border cooperation. The research methodologies presented in this issue also ranged from quantitative spatial analysis with the applications of GIS and RS to qualitative analysis. The findings and proposals are expected to provide insights for other cities and regions bothered with similar problems

(Main Section: Ecological Planning)

Wetlands are being negatively affected by various human activities such as reclamation, construction of levees, and conventional agricultural activities. Upo Wetland is the largest inland wetland in the Republic of Korea (hereinafter Korea). It has not only been designated as a wetland protection area by the Wetland Conservation Act of Korea but also registered as a Ramsar Site in 1998. In this study, cognitive mapping of the Upo Wetland and surrounding areas was applied to identify sensitive and vulnerable areas that should be carefully managed. The results of the cognitive mapping were compared with existing land-use zones of the wetland conservation area. Furthermore, this paper discusses the advantages of resident participation in cognitive mapping over conventional social and environmental analysis for landscape planning on other conservation areas

Decursinol chloroacrylates useful as fungicides

Natural products decursin and decursinol angelate were recently reported as benign fungicides for controlling rice blast. Inspired by the structural similarity of the cumarin compounds and gained hint from the skeletal motifs, we designed and prepared synthetic compounds to increase the natural product efficacy and evaluated their antifungal activities against various plant disease pathogens in vitro. Synthetically prepared compound 4 and 5 indeed suppressed the mycelial growth of B. cinerea, F. oxysporum, P. italicum, and R. quercus-mongolicae. Additionally, compound 5 effectively prevents the growth of C. coccodes and C. parasitica. Furthermore, both 4 and 5 possess better inhibitory activities on spore germination of F. oxysporum and M. oryzae than the natural product decursin and commercial pesticide Iprodione. These results suggest that the effect of the lead compound for plant disease protection can be improved by tuning the structure of the original natural product and decursinol chloroacrylates 4 and 5 are candidates for the control of F. oxysporum and M. oryzae.This work was supported by Research Resettlement Fund for the new faculty of Seoul National University (to Y. Kwon). Also, Rural Development Administration Republic of Korea supported this research (Project No. PJ016243022021 to H. Son)

Large-Scale Synthesis of Highly Luminescent InP@ZnS Quantum Dots Using Elemental Phosphorus Precursor

Department of Chemical EngineeringColloidal quantum dots can control the bandgap by controlling the particle size, and are capable of solution processing, which is cost competitive, and has a narrow half width of the emission wavelength. Using these characteristics, it is possible to utilize various kinds of LED, solar cell, and bio imaging. Among them, indium phosphide (InP) quantum dots have a bandgap capable of emitting light in the near-infrared region from the visible light region, and are less toxic to humans and the environment than cadmium-based quantum dots, and are attracting attention as next generation light emitting materials. However, the limited choice and high cost of P precursors have a negative impact on their practical applicability. In this work, I report the large-scale synthesis of highly luminescent InP@ZnS QDs from an elemental P precursor (P4), which was simply synthesized via the sublimation of red P powder. The size of the InP QDs was controlled by varying the reaction parameters such as the reaction time and temperature, and the type of In precursors. This way, the photoluminescence properties of the synthesized InP@ZnS QDs could be easily tuned across the entire visible range, while their quantum yield could be increased up to 60% via the optimization of reaction conditions. Furthermore, possible reaction pathways for the formation of InP QDs using the P4 precursor have been investigated with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and it was demonstrated that the direct reaction of P4 precursor with In precursor produces InP structures without the formation of intermediate species. The large-scale production of InP@ZnS QDs was demonstrated by yielding more than 6 g of QDs per one-batch reaction. In the case of InP using different precursor P except the Tris(Trimethylsilyl) phosphine ((TMS)3P) there has been a problem that the size distribution is poor. Two kinds of P precursors with different reactivities were used to separate the nucleation and growth processes and to induce growth along the Lamer mechanism to produce uniform particles. For this, (TMS)3P and DEAP were used as fast reacting P precursors, and P4 was used as a slow reacting P precursor. Through this, the possibility of uniform particle formation was observed. I strongly believe that the newly developed approach bears the potential to be widely used for manufacturing inexpensive high-quality QD emitters.ope

Measurement of the top quark forward-backward production asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric and chromomagnetic moments in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract The parton-level top quark (t) forward-backward asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric (d̂ t) and chromomagnetic (μ̂ t) moments have been measured using LHC pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected in the CMS detector in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. The linearized variable AFB(1) is used to approximate the asymmetry. Candidate t t ¯ events decaying to a muon or electron and jets in final states with low and high Lorentz boosts are selected and reconstructed using a fit of the kinematic distributions of the decay products to those expected for t t ¯ final states. The values found for the parameters are AFB(1)=0.048−0.087+0.095(stat)−0.029+0.020(syst),μ̂t=−0.024−0.009+0.013(stat)−0.011+0.016(syst), and a limit is placed on the magnitude of | d̂ t| < 0.03 at 95% confidence level. [Figure not available: see fulltext.