Asia

Background: The association of air pollution with multiple adverse health outcomes is becoming well established, but its negative economic impact is less well appreciated. It is important to elucidate this impact for the states of India. Methods: We estimated exposure to ambient particulate matter pollution, household air pollution, and ambient ozone pollution, and their attributable deaths and disability-adjusted life-years in every state of India as part of the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) 2019.

Using China Health and Nutrition Survey data, this study employs a consistent two-step quadratic almost ideal demand system model, with addressed problems of endogeneity of total expenditure and zero shares, to estimate the food demand elasticities among adults in rural areas with regard to the different income strata.

Plant parasitic nematodes (PPNs) cause huge agricultural and silvicultural losses every year. Most studies that investigated various mechanisms for killing nematodes used the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. Pseudomonas chlororaphis is an important biocontrol bacterium with great application potential in agriculture. Pseudomonas chlororaphis strains have the potential to control PPNs. In our previous study, we obtained one P. chlororaphis-like bacterium, namely, SPS-41, from the rhizosphere of sweet potato. This strain exhibited wide-spectrum of antifungal activity.

The plant root system influences plant growth and development due to its phenotypic, physiological, metabolomic, and microbiomic traits. Broadly speaking, it is characterized by primary (stem-attached large), secondary (primary-attached medium), and fine (secondary-attached hair-like) roots. The role of root branching order and categories (fine, medium, and large) in influencing microbial communities in the rhizosphere and root environments is not clear.