This paper reviewed the potential for agricultural land management activities for increased soil carbon sequestration with particular reference to Africa. The sections of this review covered different land management activities (including agroforestry, conservation tillage, fallow management, mulching/cover crops, water management, rotation, manure, fertilizer use, grazing management) which lead to carbon sequestration in different farming systems. This review has revealed that there is high potential to sequester additional carbon through selected land management practices. The performance of these practices depends on soil properties and climatic conditions, and the degree of soil degradation at the time of time of intervention. There is need to integrate these land management practices for carbon sequestration into larger sustainable development and livelihoods strategies and practices in order to enhance an holistic approach and reduce some of the constraints that may inhibit these positive effect of land management practices for carbon sequestration.

Recently, as robots and human have started to share daily life with each other, an interaction between human and robot is being highlighted because of these share and proximity. Thus, in order to make a safe interaction among them, it will be essential to optimize the abilities of robot by adding a pain detection system in it. In this paper, based on the skin functions, we present a set of design criteria for how “thermal pain detecting system” should be designed. The objective of this study is to determine the process of perception pain intensity in human, so we would be able to implement this complex process in robots. Thus by implementing this system in robots or other machines, they would have the capability to sense, think and react automatically to be safe in hazard situations. The fuzzy logic controller provides a means of converting a linguistic control strategy based on expert knowledge into an automatic control strategy. The first aim of this study is to analyse the heat transfer problem in skin tissue based on Pennes bioheat equation by using biological data. Afterward, we have simulated the skin behavior to design and implement this system in robots. Finally, to emulate the thermal pain, we have designed a controller based on the thermal pain model and also apply this controller system in robot finger which is designed in Matlab software. The results of this study show that by applying this system, robot behavior can be one step closer to human behavior.

Last years, the spread of toxic pollutants, especially heavy metals, in the environment have become very high. They represent a big danger for the environment and the human health, causing insidiously severe pathological alterations. Therefore their monitoring is important. In this paper we prove that the vegetation that grows alongside the streets with heavy traffic in an urban area and bear with the influence of industrial activities absorbs a big quantity of heavy metals, especially lead and zinc. Trace elements concentrations (lead, chromium, cadmium, cobalt, copper, zinc and nickel) were measured in the soil, leaves and bark samples of Populus nigra L., a common plant species from two areas: North Năvodari Camp and the principal traffic route (DJ 226 Năvodari city – Lumina), in Mamaia area (Romania). FAAS has been used for the elements’ analysis. Statistical tests have been performed to test the hypothesis of the dependence between the trace elements in soil, bark and leaves. The bioaccumulation factors have also been calculated. Their values prove low translocation from soil to plant leaves in the study areas.

This study is an applied and correlational study. The target population included all the employees (150) working in Narges Hospital, Iran, out of which 108 were selected randomly using the Krejcie and Morgan table. Content and face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed content analysis of the constructs. Reliability of the measurement was also estimated by Cronbach Alpha and found to be 0.86. The data were collected using a questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and regression analysis using SPSS software. The results showed that job characteristics and fair treatment with the employees had a higher relationship with overall job satisfaction compared to customers’ satisfaction. On the other hand, customers’ satisfaction did not have a larger effect on emotional commitment to the organization under study compared to overall job satisfaction. In addition, emotional commitment affected the attraction of potential customers but did not influence attraction of employees

This study is an applied and correlational study. The target population included all the employees (150) working in Narges Hospital, Iran, out of which 108 were selected randomly using the Krejcie and Morgan table. Content and face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed content analysis of the constructs. Reliability of the measurement was also estimated by Cronbach Alpha and found to be 0.86. The data were collected using a questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and regression analysis using SPSS software. The results showed that job characteristics and fair treatment with the employees had a higher relationship with overall job satisfaction compared to customers’ satisfaction. On the other hand, customers’ satisfaction did not have a larger effect on emotional commitment to the organization under study compared to overall job satisfaction. In addition, emotional commitment affected the attraction of potential customers but did not influence attraction of employees.

Short vase life of orchid flowers due to the phytohormone ethylene is undesirable. To date, improvement of orchid plants with long vase life flowers by field breeding is considered time-consuming and laborious. Conversely, biotechnology to produce orchids resistant to ethylene by introducing an antisense ACC oxidase gene into the orchids is an alternative to overcome the disadvantages of the conventional method. The present study aimed at optimizing the condition for the delivery of an antisense ACC oxidase gene into Dendrobium aphyllum (Roxb.) Fischer mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain EHA105 (pCAMBIA1304). High transformation efficiency was achieved by cocultivating D. aphyllum protocorms in the bacterial suspension supplemented with 100 µM acetosyringone for 20 min. Cefotaxime and hygromycin concentrations of 300 and 25 mg/l, respectively, were considered effective for eliminating A. tumefaciens and selecting putative transformants. Hygromycin resistant protocorms showed the highest GUS activity of 79.26%. DNA integration was confirmed by PCR analysis and it was found that the sizes of amplified fragments were 180, 118 and 320 bp for the 35S, NOS and antisense ACC oxidase, respectively.