Impacts, Monitoring and Management of Forest Pests and Diseases

Forest pests have diverse negative impacts on forestry economy, ecosystem services, biodiversity, and sustainable ecosystem management. The first step towards effectively managing forest pests would be to monitor their occurrence and assess their impact on forest ecosystems. The monitoring results can provide basic information for effective management strategies. The data from monitoring programs can result in the development of new methods for monitoring, assessing impact, and developing management techniques. This special issue aims to share information to assist in the effective management of forest pests, by understanding the responses of forest pests to natural and anthropogenic changes, and discussing new studies on the monitoring, assessment, and management of forest pests. The fourteen papers included in this issue focus on monitoring, assessing, and managing forest pests, including one editorial providing an overall idea of the monitoring, assessment and management of forest pests, two articles reviewing long-term changes in forest pests and forests, four papers focusing on the monitoring of forest pests, three papers on the assessment of forest pests, and four papers on the management of forest pests. These papers provide a better understanding of the structures and processes in forest ecosystems and fundamental information for the effective management of forest pests

The role of phosphodiesterase 3 in endotoxin-induced acute kidney injury

Background: Acute kidney injury frequently accompanies sepsis. Endotoxin is known to reduce tissue levels of cAMP and low levels of cAMP have been associated with renal injury. We, therefore, hypothesized that endotoxin induced renal injury by activating phosphodiesterase 3 (PDE3) which metabolizes cAMP and that amrinone an inhibitor of PDE3 would prevent the renal injury. Methods: Animals were divided into three groups (n = 7/group): 1) Control (0.9% NaCl infusion without LPS); 2) LPS (0.9% NaCl infusion with LPS); 3) Amrinone+LPS (Amrinone infusion with LPS). Either lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or vehicle was injected via the jugular vein and the rats followed for 3 hours. We explored the expression of PDE3 isoenzymes and the concentrations of cAMP in the tissue. Results: The PDE3B gene but not PDE3A was upregulated in the kidney of LPS group. Immunohistochemistry also showed that PDE3B was expressed in the distal tubule in the controls and LPS caused PDE3B expression in the proximal as well. However, PDE3A was not expressed in the kidney either in the control or LPS treated groups. Tissue level of cAMP was decreased after LPS and was associated with an increase in blood urea nitrogen, creatinine, ultrastructural proximal tubular changes, and expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in the endotoxemic kidney. In septic animals the phosphodiesterase 3 inhibitor, amrinone, preserved the tissue cAMP level, renal structural changes, and attenuated the increased blood urea nitrogen, creatinine, and iNOS expression in the kidney. Conclusion: These findings suggest a significant role for PDE3B as an important mediator of LPS-induced acute kidney injury

Relaxation of superfluid turbulence in highly oblate Bose-Einstein condensates

We investigate thermal relaxation of superfluid turbulence in a highly oblate Bose-Einstein condensate. We generate turbulent flow in the condensate by sweeping the center region of the condensate with a repulsive optical potential. The turbulent condensate shows a spatially disordered distribution of quantized vortices and the vortex number of the condensate exhibits nonexponential decay behavior which we attribute to the vortex pair annihilation. The vortex-antivortex collisions in the condensate are identified with crescent-shaped, coalesced vortex cores. We observe that the nonexponential decay of the vortex number is quantitatively well described by a rate equation consisting of one-body and two-body decay terms. In our measurement, we find that the local two-body decay rate is closely proportional to $T^2/\mu$, where $T$ is the temperature and $\mu$ is the chemical potential.Comment: 7 pages, 9 figure

Observation of a Geometric Hall Effect in a Spinor Bose-Einstein Condensate with a Skyrmion Spin Texture

For a spin-carrying particle moving in a spatially varying magnetic field, effective electromagnetic forces can arise due to the geometric phase associated with adiabatic spin rotation of the particle. We report the observation of a geometric Hall effect in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate with a skyrmion spin texture. Under translational oscillations of the spin texture, the condensate resonantly develops a circular motion in a harmonic trap, demonstrating the existence of an effective Lorentz force. When the condensate circulates, quantized vortices are nucleated in the boundary region of the condensate and the vortex number increases over 100 without significant heating. We attribute the vortex nucleation to the shearing effect of the effective Lorentz force from the inhomogeneous effective magnetic field.Comment: 9 pages, 11 figure

Molecular Dynamics Simulation to Understand the Ability of Anionic Polymers to Alter the Morphology of Calcite

Molecular dynamics was utilized to investigate the ability of anionic macromolecules to drastically change the morphology of calcite in the presence of magnesium ions. Anionic poly(acrylic acid) and poly(methacrylic acid) were compared with cationic poly(ethylene imine) in their binding behavior on calcite (104) and (110) surfaces. Poly(acrylic acid) and poly(methacrylic acid) showed preferential binding on (110) with strong electrostatic attractions, whereas poly(ethylene imine) was only weakly attracted to (104). The extent of the charge imbalance on the surfaces appeared responsible for the current results, which originated from the deficient number of the coordinating oxygen atoms of carbonate around the surface calcium. The results of the current study were in accordance with the previous experimental observations, where the {hk0} surfaces of calcite were elongated under the coexistence of the anionic polymers and magnesium ions. These results could be generally utilized in the polymer-controlled crystallization with broad implications in the specific interactions with crystal surfaces

Development Of River Recreation Index Model Reflecting Fuzziness In Water Quality Data

Recreational activities in rivers are gaining popularities in Korea due to increase of household income and rehabilitation of riverside. As a lot of people enjoy recreation in water, proper information on the water quality of rivers should be provided to the public in order to secure the safety of publics. In this research, a River Recreation Index (RRI) model was developed based on fuzzy set theory. RRI is the integrated index of important water quality parameters related to recreational activities in rivers and expressed as point from 0 to 100. The fuzzy synthetic evaluation approach was used to reflect the fuzziness of water quality criteria and uncertainty in water quality data. The procedure of the fuzzy synthetic evaluation is divided into four steps: choosing water quality parameters which are integrated into RRI, classifying the range of each water quality parameter, designing appropriate membership function of each parameter, and summarizing all membership value into the RRI. In this study, DO, pH, chlorophyll a and turbidity were chosen as the parameters and the criteria of these four parameters were determined referring domestic and overseas water quality criteria. Membership function in the model was determined as half-triangular shape because it expressed the fuzziness of water quality criteria well. The values of four water quality parameters were converted to membership value by the half-triangular membership function. Then, RRI was calculated by weighted average of the membership values. The proposed model was applied to Sangdong monitoring station in the Nakdong River, Korea. The application result was compared with both the calculation results based on the crisp water quality criteria and real time water quality index (RTWQI) posted by the Ministry of Environment. The simulation results show that RRI with the fuzzy function showed more reasonable changes corresponding to the trend of the water quality parameters

Metal/graphene sheets as p-type transparent conducting electrodes in GaN light emitting diodes

We demonstrate the use of graphene based transparent sheets as a p-type current spreading layer in GaN light emitting diodes (LEDs). Very thin Ni/Au was inserted between graphene and p-type GaN to reduce contact resistance, which reduced contact resistance from similar to 5.5 to similar to 0.6 Omega/ cm(2), with no critical optical loss. As a result, LEDs with metal-graphene provided current spreading and injection into the p-type GaN layer, enabling three times enhanced electroluminescent intensity compared with those with graphene alone. We confirmed very strong blue light emission in a large area of the metal-graphene layer by analyzing image brightness.open281