Out of 45 actinomycetes isolated from garden soil, pond water and air; fifteen showed good emulsification activity. Streptomyces sp. S22 isolated from garden soil produced maximum bioemulsifier with 0.5% (v/v) sunflower oil during stationary phase at 37 degrees C, pH 6 and 250 rev/min. Emulsification activity was maximum (320 EU/ml) with sunflower oil as substrate. Partially purified bioemulsif...

This paper puts forward a scheme to form perlite sound absorption boards by vibration molding according to the material properties and the characteristics of vibration forming method. In the trial, the feasibility and reliability of this method were confirmed by studying the effect of working pressure, frequency and vibration force on the quality of the perlite sound absorption board. Besides, ...

In this study, a settlement measurement device was used to track the settlement of different layers in composting piles, and time courses of settlement velocity, bulk density distribution, and effective bulk density were investigated. Settlement is divided into two stages: the physical compressive settlement and the mass loss settlement. At the end of the former stage, bulk density (rho') and p...

With the expansion of urban agriculture in many North American cities, there is a current need to evaluate the soil and urban environment to assess potential risks of metal contamination in urban grown food. In this study, a university farm, a community garden, and a brownfield located in Vancouver, BC were characterized with respect to soil metal concentrations, atmospheric deposition of metal...

During the course of certain experiments designed to demonstrate ' antagonistic bacteria ' for intestinal pathogenic bacteria of man, the interesting observation was made, that manysamples of garden and field soil contain bacteriophages active against these organisms. A 1 in 100 suspension in saline of soil when added in 1 c.cm. amounts to melted agar containing a thick suspension of one of the...

Stable carbon isotopes are used extensively to partition total soil CO2 efflux into root-derived rhizosphere respiration or autotrophic respiration and soil-derived heterotrophic respiration. However, it remains unclear whether CO2 from rhizosphere respiration has the same δC value as root biomass. Here we investigated the magnitude of C isotope fractionation during rhizosphere respiration rela...

Composts are the products obtained after the aerobic degradation of different types of organic matter waste and can be used as substrates or substrate/soil amendments for plant cultivation. There is a small but increasing number of reports that suggest that foliar diseases may be reduced when using compost, rather than standard substrates, as growing medium. The purpose of this study was to exa...

A high survival rate for transformed papaya plants when transferred to the field is useful in the quest for improving the commercial quality traits. We report in this paper an improved rooting method for the production of transformed Malaysian Eksotika papaya with high survival rate when transferred to the field. Shoots were regenerated from embryogenic calli transformed with antisense and RNAi...

Spent mushroom compost (SMC) of Pleurotus pulmonarius (an edible fungus) was used as soil conditioner for the improvement of growth of four common Nigerian vegetables (Abelmoschus esculentus, Lycopersicum esculentum, Capsicum annum and Capsicum chinense). The results of these investigations showed that the vegetables responded well to the SMC treatment. Each of them attained its best growth and...