Western flower thrips, (Pergande) (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) have been recognized as serious pests worldwide. Commercially available chemical pesticides challenges against the resistance of the pest and safety to consumers. Herein we investigated the usability of soil-treatment of entomopathogenic Beauveria bassiana (Bb) ERL isolates in tomatoes. Bb-egfp was highly virulent to western flower thrips in laboratory conditions and colonized in soil, which provided a chance for western flower thrips larvae to contact the colonized fungal mass. In a glasshouse trial, Bb ERL836 and Bb ERL1578 granule (GR) were applied to soil surface and mixed well, and five females were infested to each pot of tomato 3 days after the application. The two treatments significantly reduced thrips population in tomatoes 20 and 40 days post applications, comparable to the control efficacy of clothianidin granule (GR) formulation. In the following field trial, the two ERL fungal treatments showed 69.2% and 61.5% of control efficacy, which were similar to that of clothianidin GR (76.9%). This work suggests that applied B. bassiana colonized in soil well and thrips larvae easily contacted the fungal mass, which possibly enabled the control strategy to be alternative way to the chemical control.

The metal product from the electrolytic reduction of uranium oxide in LiCl molten salt retains about 10 ~ 20wt% of the residual salts. Salt vacuum distillation is conducted to separate the residual salt from the metal product and well-performed in a glove box in an argon atmosphere. A dimensionless analysis of the characteristics of a salt vacuum distiller needs to be scaled up for a high capacity process. The vacuum distillation apparatus can be of two different sizes (M-type and P-type). M-type equipment is small in size and exhibits a high recovery rate of more than 95%. A comparison of two salt vacuum distillers was conducted with the dimensionless analysis method. Heat and fluid flows are strongly influenced by the structure of the apparatus and phase transition phenomena of vacuum distillation. The several dimensionless parameters were calculated at the nozzle throat located between the evaporator and the receiver and at different operating temperatures. Both salt vacuum distillers had similar trends of dimensionless parameters. However, the distributions of the parameter values varied with the nozzle geometry and size. The results of the dimensionless analysis will aid the scaling up of the salt distillation process.

The present issue of insect resistance and environmental toxicity of pesticides is triggering deep discussion about the pest management tactics, in which pest monitoring and control activity are mainly involved. Novel control agents, hopefully overcoming the present issues and problems, should be researched and commercially applied to the farm fields. With the monitoring-based research, additionally we have to focus on the control-based, particularly control agent-based research and application. Entomo- pathogenic fungi can used as one of the possible novel control agents once considerations are given to the control of soil- or water-dwelling pests. In our research group, the entomopathogenic fungal library has been constructed using the mealworm-based isolation system, which showed a variety of opportunities of their use in pest control. Important key production technologies including granular formulation have been developed to increase their industrialization. Some entomopathogenic fungal isolates showed high biological performance in the control of rice weevils, western flower thrips and Japanese bettles in field stands. To elucidate the fungal mode of action, a fungal transformation system using AtMT and gene identification tools were established. Recently a more deep study about the relationship between insect and entomopathogenic fungi is be investigated using RNA seq. We suggest that to make the entomopathogenic fungal products be applied to agricultural farm field, R&D of down-stream process should be seriously considered as the key step.

A large-scale neutral hydrogen (H i) ring serendipitously found in the Leo I galaxy group is 200 kpc in diameter with MHi ~ 1:67 X 109M⊙, unique in size in the Local Universe. It is still under debate where this Hi ring originated - whether it has formed out of the gas remaining after the formation of a galaxy group (primordial origin) or been stripped during galaxy-galaxy interactions (tidal origin). We are investigating the optical and Hi gas properties of the dwarf galaxies located within the gas ring in order to probe its formation mechanism. In this work, we present the photometric properties of the dwarfs inside the ring using the CFHT MegaCam u*, g', r' and i'-band data. We discuss the origin of the gas ring based on the stellar age and metal abundance of dwarf galaxies contained within it.

Hydroxyapatite (HA), which is an important calcium phosphate mineral, has been applied in orthopedics, dentistry, and many other fields depending upon its morphology. HA can be synthesized with different morphologies through controlling the synthesis method and several parameters. Here, we synthesize various morphologies of HA using two simple methods: hydrothermal combustion and solution combustion. The phase purity of the synthesized HA is confirmed using X-ray diffractometry. It demonstrates that pure phased hydroxyapatite can be synthesized using both methods. The morphology of the synthesized powder is examined using scanning electron microscopy. The effects of pH and temperature on the final powder are also investigated. At 140 oC, using the hydrothermal method, nano-micro HA rods with a hexagonal crystal structure can be synthesized, whereas using solution combustion method at 600 oC, a dense cubic morphology can be synthesized, which exhibits monoclinic crystal structures.