BACKGROUND The recent inclusion of the cocoa sector as an option for carbon storage necessitates the need to quantify the C stocks in cocoa systems of Ghana. RESULTS Using farmers' fields, the carbon (C) stocks in shaded and unshaded cocoa systems selected from the Eastern (ER) and Western (WR) regions of Ghana were measured. Total ecosystem C (biomass C + soil C to 60 cm depth) ranged from 8...

A catadioptric stereo system has been developed for depth perception. The system uses two sets of planar mirrors to create two virtual cameras. A design procedure is presented with the aim of building a compact assembly. This has resulted in an inexpensive and compact system that achieves a depth resolution of 5.8 cm at a working distance of 2 m.

Extensive expansion of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for cell-based therapies remains challenging since long-term cultivation and excessive passaging in two-dimensional conditions result in a loss of essential stem cell properties. Indeed, low survival rate of cells, alteration of surface marker profiles, and reduced differentiation capacity are observed after in vitro expansion and reduce ther...

The objective of this paper is to study the impact of depth perception and movement freedom on learning surgical tasks by novice subjects using new laparoscopic technology.

Genetically modified (GM) maize expressing the insecticidal protein Cry1Ab from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt maize) is the only GM crop planted commercially in the European Union (EU). Cultivation in accordance with Directive 2001/18/EC demands post-market environmental monitoring (PMEM) to ensure the detection and prevention of adverse effects on the environment possibly deriving from commercial...

introduction: better use of water and soil resources in paddy fields, increase in rice production and farmer's income, installation of subsurface drainage system is necessary. the main goalof these systems, are aeration conditions improvement prevention of water logging, yield increase, land use increase and multiuse of the land. in different countries, installation of subsurface drainage cause...

Typical reclaimed lands located in coastal areas including Saemangeum are not suitable for cultivation of upland crops due to a high salinity and groundwater levels low nutrient contents. Therefore, sustainable crop cultivation, it is necessary soil salinity, water content, nutrients that development land management cultivation. In this study, we investigated physico-chemical characteristics so...

Cells must coordinate adjustments in genome expression to accommodate changes in their environment. We hypothesized that the amount of transcriptome change is proportional to the amount of environmental change. To capture the effects of environmental changes on the transcriptome, we compared transcriptome diversities (defined as the Shannon entropy of frequency distribution) of silkworm fat-bod...

The application of high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene has increased the size of microbial diversity datasets by several orders of magnitude, providing improved access to the rare biosphere compared with cultivation-based approaches and more established cultivation-independent techniques. By contrast, cultivation-based approaches allow the retrieval of both common and uncommon bacte...