Ethnobotanical study on medicinal plants in traditional markets of Son La province, Vietnam

Traditional markets in Vietnam are considered as important places for trading medicinal plants and also play a social role of exchanging traditional use of herbal medicine among different cultural and social groups at the local level. This study aims to identify and document medicinal plants used in 32 traditional markets of Son La province. Data were obtained through interviews and field observation method. A total of 167 informants include 13 herbalists, 49 herbal sellers, and 105 local people were interviewed. The study collected a total of 99 plant species belonging to 88 genera and 57 families. Identified plant species are used by local people for the treatment of 61 different diseases. Leaves, stems and roots are most commonly used either fresh, dried or by decocting the dried parts in water. In the study, the Relative Frequency of Citation (RFC) ranged from 0.02 to 0.44; the Use Value (UV) ranged from 0 to 0.84; the Informant Consensus Factor (ICF) ranged from 0.84 to 1; the Fidelity Level (FL) ranged from 44.44% to 100%. Villagers view and our observations confirmed that knowledge about the number of medicinal plants available in the study area and used by interviewees positively correlated with the threats on medicinal plants in the wild habitats. Illegal and unsustainable exploitation by the local people is a major cause of their depletion from nature

Contribution of forest to rural households’ livelihood: evidences from Da river basin in the northwest mountainous region of Vietnam

This paper examined how forest has contributed to rural households’ livelihood in Da river basin, the northwest mountainous region of Vietnam. The results revealed that forest predominantly contributes to the total income of rural residents in the region. Specifically, forestry land area, access to non-timber forest products, and payment for forest environmental services significantly affected household’s income in the region. However, rural people in the region have still faced several difficulties that constrain household’s livelihood. Of these difficulties, lack of financial capital, epidemic diseases in animal husbandry, limited access to market information and natural disaster are popular barriers to livelihood of people in the region. This paper also recommended several policies to improve rural livelihood in Da river basin. These includes: (i) integrating issues regarding payment for forest environmental services and REDD+ into socioeconomic development plan; (ii) improving awareness of local people on sustainable natural capital use through ecosystem conservation policy; (iii) providing preferential credit and training on agricultural production techniques; and (iv) encouraging market-oriented agriculture. 

Physics-based simulations to predict the differential effects of motor control and musculoskeletal deficits on gait dysfunction in cerebral palsy : a retrospective case study

Physics-based simulations of walking have the theoretical potential to support clinical decision-making by predicting the functional outcome of treatments in terms of walking performance. Yet before using such simulations in clinical practice, their ability to identify the main treatment targets in specific patients needs to be demonstrated. In this study, we generated predictive simulations of walking with a medical imaging based neuro-musculoskeletal model of a child with cerebral palsy presenting crouch gait. We explored the influence of altered muscle-tendon properties, reduced neuromuscular control complexity, and spasticity on gait dysfunction in terms of joint kinematics, kinetics, muscle activity, and metabolic cost of transport. We modeled altered muscle-tendon properties by personalizing Hill-type muscle-tendon parameters based on data collected during functional movements, simpler neuromuscular control by reducing the number of independent muscle synergies, and spasticity through delayed muscle activity feedback from muscle force and force rate. Our simulations revealed that, in the presence of aberrant musculoskeletal geometries, altered muscle-tendon properties rather than reduced neuromuscular control complexity and spasticity were the primary cause of the crouch gait pattern observed for this child, which is in agreement with the clinical examination. These results suggest that muscle-tendon properties should be the primary target of interventions aiming to restore an upright gait pattern for this child. This suggestion is in line with the gait analysis following muscle-tendon property and bone deformity corrections. Future work should extend this single case analysis to more patients in order to validate the ability of our physics-based simulations to capture the gait patterns of individual patients pre- and post-treatment. Such validation would open the door for identifying targeted treatment strategies with the aim of designing optimized interventions for neuro-musculoskeletal disorders

Aquilaria yunnanensis S.C. Huang (Thymelaeaceae), A New Record for the Flora of Vietnam

Aquilaria yunnanensis S.C. Huang (Thymelaeaceae), known to be endemic to Yunnan, is recorded for the first time from Dong Son Ky Thuong Nature Reserve, Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam. A taxonomic description and DNA analysis based on our Vietnamese collections are presented, together with information on its distribution, habitat and colour photographs

Identifying long-term stable refugia for dominant Castanopsis species of evergreen broad-leaved forests in East Asia: A tool for ensuring their conservation

Identifying and protecting refugia is a priority for conservation management under projected anthropogenic climate change. We have two main objectives: the first is to explore the spatial (East Asia) and temporal (Last Glacial Maximum to year 2070) distribution patterns of dominant Castanopsis species of evergreen broad-leaved forests, also the relation with their niche breadths; the second is to identify long-term stable refugia for preserving these species and provide a framework of conservation strategies. We find that there is an extraordinary richness with 32 dominant Castanopsis species, and they form both a geographically and climatically almost unbroken connection from ca. 5°N to 38°N, having thus ecological significance. During the Mid-Holocene and, particularly, the Last Glacial Maximum, the predicted suitable areas of the species as a whole were larger than those in the present. By 2070, potentially suitable areas with high richness of dominant Castanopsis species will be reduced by 94.5 % on average. No correlation between species niche breadths and distribution ranges is found, which could be due to regional climate stability. Mountains of southwestern and southern Yunnan in China are identified as climatically long-term stable refugia for 7¿9 Castanopsis species. We recommend that these refugia have the highest priority of conservation to prevent their extinction. Our suggested urgent measures include improving the effectiveness of currently protected Castanopsis species and expanding the network of protected areas to cover a larger fraction of the refugia, as well as ensuring Castanopsis species natural regeneration potential in fragmented and natural secondary forest areas.This study received financial support from the Major Program for Basic Research Project of Yunnan Province, China (202101BC070002), the Science and Technology Department of Yunnan University, China (2019YNU002), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2015FY210200-15), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant PID2020-119163GB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033), the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan (JPMEERF20202002), and the Northeastern Research Institute of Petrified Wood and Mineral Resources, Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University, Thailand.Keywords 1. Introduction 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Data collection and notations 2.2. Ecological niche modeling 2.3. Data analyses 3. Results 3.1. Dominant Castanopsis species in East Asia today: richness and distribution patterns 3.2. Richness of dominant Castanopsis species shaped by climate change 3.3. Niche groups and niche breadths of dominant Castanopsis species 3.4. Climatically long-term stable refugia 4. Discussion 4.1. Richness of dominant Castanopsis species shaped by climate change 4.2. Niche groups and niche breadths of dominant Castanopsis species 4.3. Long-term stable refugia and conservation strategies 5. Conclusions CRediT authorship contribution statement Declaration of competing interest Acknowledgements Appendix A. Supplementary material Reference

Cross-National Differences in Victimization : Disentangling the Impact of Composition and Context

Varying rates of criminal victimization across countries are assumed to be the outcome of countrylevel structural constraints that determine the supply ofmotivated o¡enders, as well as the differential composition within countries of suitable targets and capable guardianship. However, previous empirical tests of these ‘compositional’ and ‘contextual’ explanations of cross-national di¡erences have been performed upon macro-level crime data due to the unavailability of comparable individual-level data across countries. This limitation has had two important consequences for cross-national crime research. First, micro-/meso-level mechanisms underlying cross-national differences cannot be truly inferred from macro-level data. Secondly, the e¡ects of contextual measures (e.g. income inequality) on crime are uncontrolled for compositional heterogeneity. In this paper, these limitations are overcome by analysing individual-level victimization data across 18 countries from the International CrimeVictims Survey. Results from multi-level analyses on theft and violent victimization indicate that the national level of income inequality is positively related to risk, independent of compositional (i.e. micro- and meso-level) di¡erences. Furthermore, crossnational variation in victimization rates is not only shaped by di¡erences in national context, but also by varying composition. More speci¢cally, countries had higher crime rates the more they consisted of urban residents and regions with lowaverage social cohesion.

A phylogenetic classification of the world’s tropical forests

Knowledge about the biogeographic affinities of the world’s tropical forests helps to better understand regional differences in forest structure, diversity, composition and dynamics. Such understanding will enable anticipation of region specific responses to global environmental change. Modern phylogenies, in combination with broad coverage of species inventory data, now allow for global biogeographic analyses that take species evolutionary distance into account. Here we present the first classification of the world’s tropical forests based on their phylogenetic similarity. We identify five principal floristic regions and their floristic relationships: (1) Indo-Pacific, (2) Subtropical, (3) African, (4) American, and (5) Dry forests. Our results do not support the traditional Neo- versus Palaeo-tropical forest division, but instead separate the combined American and African forests from their Indo-Pacific counterparts. We also find indications for the existence of a global dry forest region, with representatives in America, Africa, Madagascar and India. Additionally, a northern hemisphere Subtropical forest region was identified with representatives in Asia and America, providing support for a link between Asian and American northern hemisphere forests

Magnetic Fields toward Ophiuchus-B Derived from SCUBA-2 Polarization Measurements

We present the results of dust emission polarization measurements of Ophiuchus-B (Oph-B) carried out using the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array 2 (SCUBA-2) camera with its associated polarimeter (POL-2) on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii. This work is part of the B-fields in Star-forming Region Observations survey initiated to understand the role of magnetic fields in star formation for nearby star-forming molecular clouds. We present a first look at the geometry and strength of magnetic fields in Oph-B. The field geometry is traced over ~0.2 pc, with clear detection of both of the sub-clumps of Oph-B. The field pattern appears significantly disordered in sub-clump Oph-B1. The field geometry in Oph-B2 is more ordered, with a tendency to be along the major axis of the clump, parallel to the filamentary structure within which it lies. The degree of polarization decreases systematically toward the dense core material in the two sub-clumps. The field lines in the lower density material along the periphery are smoothly joined to the large-scale magnetic fields probed by NIR polarization observations. We estimated a magnetic field strength of 630 ± 410 μG in the Oph-B2 sub-clump using a Davis–Chandrasekhar–Fermi analysis. With this magnetic field strength, we find a mass-to-flux ratio λ = 1.6 ± 1.1, which suggests that the Oph-B2 clump is slightly magnetically supercritical

The JCMT BISTRO Survey: Studying the Complex Magnetic Field of L43

We present observations of polarized dust emission at 850 μm from the L43 molecular cloud, which sits in the Ophiuchus cloud complex. The data were taken using SCUBA-2/POL-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope as a part of the BISTRO large program. L43 is a dense (NH 10 22 2 ~ –1023 cm−2) complex molecular cloud with a submillimeter-bright starless core and two protostellar sources. There appears to be an evolutionary gradient along the isolated filament that L43 is embedded within, with the most evolved source closest to the Sco OB2 association. One of the protostars drives a CO outflow that has created a cavity to the southeast. We see a magnetic field that appears to be aligned with the cavity walls of the outflow, suggesting interaction with the outflow. We also find a magnetic field strength of up to ∼160 ± 30 μG in the main starless core and up to ∼90 ± 40 μG in the more diffuse, extended region. These field strengths give magnetically super- and subcritical values, respectively, and both are found to be roughly trans-Alfvénic. We also present a new method of data reduction for these denser but fainter objects like starless cores