Search

Small-scale household pond aquaculture development has significantly contributed to Chinese food security, poverty reduction, and improved livelihood of farmers. Before the onset of the economic reform in 1979, markets were non-existent. We address the question of the importance of the part played by decentralized government in coordinating the economic activities from a planned to a market-directed economy in the aquaculture sector. In this case study, we have interviewed farmers and officials and used secondary official data in Shandong province. We find that coordination by local government has been crucial in developing small-scale household agricultural and aquaculture production in transitional economy, and enabling the market to become the driving force in the development of household pond aquaculture in rural China. The Chinese experience may bring valuable lessons for other developing countries, where hunger are endemic, and the smallholder farmers are the key target in poverty reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CaCoSO, synthesized from CaO, Co, and S at 900 °C, is isostructural with CaZnSO and CaFeSO. The structure is non-centrosymmetric by virtue of the arrangement of the vertex-sharing CoS3O tetrahedra which are linked by their sulfide vertices to form layers. The crystal structure adopts space group P63mc (No. 186), and the lattice parameters are a = 3.7524(9) Å and c = 11.138(3) Å at room temperature with two formula units in the unit cell. The compound is highly insulating, and powder neutron diffraction measurements reveal long-range antiferromagnetic order with a propagation vector k = (1/3, 1/3, 1/2). The magnetic scattering from a powder sample can be modeled starting from a 120° arrangement of Co2+ spin vectors in the triangular planes and then applying a canting out of the planes which can be modeled in the magnetic space group Ccc (space group 9.40 in the Belov, Neronova, and Smirnova (BNS) scheme) with Co2+ moments of 2.72(5) μB. The antiferromagnetic structure of the recently reported compound BaCoSO, which has a very different crystal structure from CaCoSO, is also described, and this magnetic structure and the magnitude of the ordered moment (2.75(2) μB) are found by experiment to be similar to those predicted computationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functional and structural features of microbial load in soil are influenced by the presence of insecticides. This study examined the impact of two organophosphorus insecticides, dimethoate and parathion on the microbial load of soil. The colony count of fungi, actinomycetes, bacteria, and nitrogen fixing bacteria was reduced after insecticides application at 7 and 14 days, but at 28 days the colony count began to increase. The growth of two white rot fungi including Pleurotus sajor-caju and Phanerochaete chrysosporium was affected by parathion, which was reflected by a decrease in colony radius to 1.85±0.05 and 0.75±0.06 cm, respectively, and by dimethoate, reflected by a decrease in colony radius to 3.33±0.12 and 1.85±0.05 cm, respectively at 40 mg/L compared to colony radius at control 7.90±0.12 and 7.50±0.06 cm, respectively. The applied low concentration (10 mg/L) encouraged P. sajor-caju and P. chrysosporium to remove up to 87.7% and 81.8% of dimethoate, respectively, and 69.20 and 68.30% of parathion, respectively compared with the decomposition at high dose (40 mg/L) at 28 days. The presence of insecticides induced the production of ligninolytic enzymes lignin peroxidase, laccase, and manganase peroxidase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A convenient protocol for the synthesis of A-ring lactones derived from cholesterol was developed. A lactone reduction–lactol separation–reoxidation sequence, applied to the inseparable mixture of diastereomeric lactones, allows the production of multigram amounts of each lactone in pure form. The same sequence applied to A-ring lactones derived from diosgenin produced similar results. A detailed NMR characterization of all the obtained lactones is also provided. X-ray diffraction corroborated the structure of the obtained compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]