The biological efficiencies of promising Pleurotus spp. were evaluated. Pleurotus ostreatus, Pleurotus tuberregium,and Pleurotus sajor-cajuwere investigated at temperatures of 22oC, 20oC, and 18oC to determine their ability to adapt to temperatures that are likely to be found in subtropical regions. The experiment was conducted using a substrate comprising Popular sawdust 60% + cotton seed 20% + beet pulp 20% under a relative humidity of 65%. The results indicated that there were significant differences in terms of biological efficiency between the species: P. tuber regium 128.84% at 22oC, P. ostreatus 108.41% at 22oC, and P. sajor-caju is 80% at 20oC. The common temperatures at which all species showed the highest biological efficiencies were 22oC and 20oC. Therefore, the production of the evaluated species was equal to or surpassed biological efficiencies reported in tropical environments, thereby demonstrating a potential opportunity to adapt to tropical environments without compromising quality standards.

Maintaining fuel sheath integrity during dry storage is important. Intact sheath acts as the primary containment barrier for both fuel pellets and fission products over the dry storage periods and during subsequent fuel handling operations. In KNF, in-house fuel performance code was developed to predict the overall behavior of a fuel rod under normal operating conditions. It includes the analysis modules to predict temperature, pellet cracking and deformation, sheath stress and strain at the mid-plane of the pellet and pellet-pellet interfaces, fission gas release and internal gas pressure. The main focus of the code is to provide information on initial conditions prior to dry storage, such as fission gas inventory and its distribution within the fuel pellet, initial volumes of storage spaces and their locations, radial profile of heat generation within the pellet, etc. To upgrade the developed code that address all the damage mechanisms, the first step was a review of the available technical information on phenomena relevant to fuel integrity. Potential degradation mechanisms that may affect sheath integrity of CANDU spent fuel during dry storage are: creep rupture under internal gas pressure, sheath oxidation in air environment, stress corrosion cracking (SCC), delayed hydride cracking (DHC), and sheath splitting due to UO2 oxidation for a defective fuel. The failure by creep rupture, SCC or DHC is in the form of small cracks or punctures. The failure by sheath oxidation or sheath splitting due to UO2 oxidation results in a gross sheath rupture. The second step was to examine the technical bases of all modules of the in-house code, identify and extend the ranges of all modules to required operating ranges. This step assessed the degradation mechanisms for the fuel integrity. The objective of this assessment is to predict the probability of sheath through-wall failure by a degradation mechanisms as a function of the sheath temperature during dry storage. Further improvements being considered include upgrades of the analysis module to achieve sufficient accuracy in key output parameters. The emphasis in the near future will be on validation of the inhouse code according to a rigorous and formal methodology. The developed models provide a platform for research and industrial applications, including the design of fuel behavior experiments and prediction of safe operating margins for CANDU spent fuel.

We report facile solution processing of mesoporous hematite (α-Fe2O3) thin films for high efficiency solar-driven water splitting. Fe2O3 thin films were prepared on fluorine doped tin oxide(FTO) conducting substrates by spin coating of a precursor solution followed by annealing at 550 oC for 30 min. in air ambient. Specifically, the precursor solution was prepared by dissolving non-toxic FeCl3 as an Fe source in highly versatile dimethyl sulfoxide(DMSO) as a solvent. The as-deposited and annealed thin films were characterized for their morphological, structural and optical properties using field-emission scanning electron microscopy(FE-SEM), X-ray diffraction(XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS) and UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy. The photoelectrochemical performance of the precursor (α-FeOOH) and annealed (α-Fe2O3) films were characterized and it was found that the α-Fe2O3 film exhibited an increased photocurrent density of ~0.78 mA/cm2 at 1.23 V vs. RHE, which is about 3.4 times higher than that of the α-FeOOH films (0.23 mA/cm2 at 1.23 V vs. RHE). The improved performance can be attributed to the improved crystallinity and porosity of α-Fe2O3 thin films after annealing treatment at higher temperatures. Detailed electrical characterization was further carried out to elucidate the enhanced PEC performance of α-Fe2O3 thin films.

Two new species of Tylenchorhynchus Cobb, 1913 from sugar cane fields in Sudan, T. sudanensis and T. elamini are described and illustrated. T. sudanensis is characterized by rather medium body size female, L= 0.692 ㎜ long with rather medium stylet length of 20 – 23 ㎛. While T. elamini is characterized by medium body size female, L = 0.61 – 0.78 ㎜ long, medium stylet length of 16 –19 ㎛. Different characters of two new species are discussed. In addition, vital measurements and brief descriptions of two species are presented.

The pinewood nematode, Bursaphelenchus xylophilus (Steinner & Buhrer) Nickle, has two different life stages according to several environmental factors: dispersal stage and propagative stages. The dispersal stage is closely related to the migration to other host pines, whereas the propagative stage is coupled to the direct cause of pine wilt. To establish expressed sequence tag (EST) database of two life cycles of B. xylophilus, subtractive EST libraries were constructed using suppressed subtractive hybridization (SSH). From 3,072 and 3,840 sequences of dispersal- and propagative-specific stage cDNA libraries, 1,927 and 2,604 clusters were generated, respectively, which were annotated by BLASTx and Gene ontology (GO). A total of 1,112 (57.7%) and 1,215 (46.7%) clusters from the dispersal- and propagative-specific stage cDNA libraries respectively had the matched BLASTx hits (E≤10-2), among which 913 (47.4%) and 960 (36.9%) were classified into three categories in Gene ontology. From GO database, some respective stage-specific genes were searched and estimated the relative transcripts level according to stages using the quantitative real-time PCR.