Chemical pesticides are widely used in agriculture, which endangers both environmental health and food safety. Biocontrol is an environmentally-friendly and cost-effective green technique in environmental protection and agricultural production; it generally uses selected bioresources, including beneficial microorganisms. We isolated a novel bacterial strain (NKG-1) from the rare dormant volcani...

Rapid land-use change in recent decades in China and its impact on terrestrial biodiversity have been widely studied, particularly at local and regional scales. However, the effect of land-use change on the diversity of soils that support the terrestrial biological system has rarely been studied. Here, we report the first effort to assess the impact of land-use change on soil diversity for the ...

In the context of sustainable development which is a balancing act between the fulfilment of human needs and the protection of the natural environment, the use of natural fibers such as coir in geotechnical applications is desirable. Reinforcing the soil with coir fibers/coir geotextiles is a cost effective solution to the ground/soil improvement problems. The effects of fiber parameters on the...

Abstract: Due to the expansion of high voltage Alternating Current (AC) power transmission lines and cathodically protected buried pipelines, it is becoming more and more difficult to construct them with enough safe distances between them. Thus, the pipelines are frequently exposed to induced AC interferences, which result in perturbation of Cathodic Protection (CP) due to AC corrosion. To s...

Many traumatic upper body injuries to deminers are caused by debris generated by anti-personnel (AP) blast mines. This study better characterizes the soil ejecta threat from buried anti-personnel mines and provides an improved evaluation of light upper body protection systems by relating the threat to resultant damage to soft tissue simulants. For each tested soil type, ejecta characterization ...

Sulfur is an element necessary for the life cycle of higher plants. Its assimilation and reduction into essential biomolecules are pivotal factors determining a plant's growth and vigor as well as resistance to environmental stress. While certain soil microbes can enhance ion solubility via chelating agents or oxidation, microbial regulation of plant-sulfur assimilation has not been reported. W...