the extensive use of chemical fertilizers poses serious collateral problems such as environmental pollution, pest resistance development and food safety decline. Researches focused on applying plant-beneficial microorganisms to partially replace chemical fertilizer use is increasing due to the requirement of sustainable agriculture development. Thus to investigate the possibility of a plantbeneficial Trichoderma strain and its bio-organic fertilizer product in saving chemical fertilizer application and in improving crop quality, a field trial and continuous pot experiments were carried out with tomato. Four treatments were set up: a reduced application of chemical fertilizer (75% of the conventional application) plus Trichoderma-enriched bio-organic fertilizer (BF), organic fertilizer (OF) or Trichoderma spore suspension (SS), with using the 100% rate of the conventional chemical fertilizer as the control (CF). The results showed that the total soluble sugar, Vitamin C and nitrate accumulations were, respectively, +up to 24%, +up to 57% and-up to 62% in the tomatoes of the BF treatment compared to those of the control (CF). And both of the pot and field trials revealed that reduced rates of chemical fertilizer plus bio-organic fertilizer produced tomato yields equivalent to those obtained using the 100% of the chemical fertilizer. However, application with the inoculant alone (SS) or combined with the organic fertilizer alone (OF) would lead to a yield decreases of 6-38% and 9-35% over the control. Since the increased abundance of soil microflora and the enhanced soil fertility frequently showed positive linear correlations especially in the BF-treated soils, we conclude that the efficacy of this bioorganic fertilizer for maintaining a stable tomato yield and improving tomato quality may be due to the improved soil microbial activity. Thus, the results suggest that the Trichoderma bio-organic fertilizer could be employed in combination with the appropriate rates of chemical fertilizers to get maximum benefits regarding yield, quality and fertilizer savings.

The nonlinear parameter of the heel skin has been successfully predicted from in vivo indentation tests based on a subject-specific FE model. Skin properties' sensitivity tests clearly showed that the stiffness of the heel skin could have a direct effect on the biomechanics of the hind foot. The results suggest that individuals with a pathologically stiffened heel skin could exert an increase in the heel pressure, which may potentially lead to skin breakdown or ulcer.

We demonstrate a photonic crystal fiber temperature sensor based on surface plasmon resonance and evaluate it using the finite element method. A temperature-sensitive material is injected into the central air hole of the photonic crystal fiber. The air hole is coated with nanoscale gold film. Six cores are formed by removing air holes in the second layer, which supports the core mode. The coupling between the core mode and the surface plasmon polariton mode occurs as the phase matching condition is satisfied. The average sensitivity and linearity become −2.15 nm/°C and 0.99991, respectively. The length of this fiber is only 1 mm. Our temperature sensor is competitive within the temperature sensor field.

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Two kinds of novel plasmonic high-sensitivity of refractive index(RI) sensors based on analyte-filled photonic crystal fiber (AF-PCF) are proposed in this paper. The metallic gold and silver is used as the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) activity metal. A full-vector finite element method (FEM) is applied to analyze and investigate the sensing and coupling characteristics of this designed AF-PCF with the gold or silver layer. Phase matching between 2nd surface plasmon polariton (SPP) and fundamental modes can be met at different wavelengths as the analyte of RI is increased from 1.40 to 1.42. The phase matching wavelength of the designed AF-PCF with the gold layer is shifted to the longer wavelength direction compared to that with the silver layer, and the resonance strength is much stronger. The average sensitivities of 7040 nm/RIU and 7017 nm/RIU in the sensing arrange from 1.40 to 1.42 with high linearity are achieved for the designed sensors with the gold and silver layers, respectively, which are almost the same. While the figure of merit (FOM) with silver layer is much better than that with the gold layer.Index Terms: Photonic crystal fiber, Surface plasmon resonance. Refractive index sensor 1943-0655 (c)