Plateand direct-counts of bacteria as well as hyphal length were determined in fields applied annually for 10 years with definite amounts of artificial compost made from rice straw. The succession of microbial groups was observed after application of the compost. The direct-count of bacteria increased immediately and reached its highest level just after the compost application in October. The plate-counts of bacteria on conventional media such as albumen and nutrient broth agars fluctuated in a similar manner to the direct-count. However, the plate-counts of bacteria on 10-or l00-fold diluted albumen or nutrient broth agar fluctuated in a different manner: they began to increase from April and attained a maximum level in June. The hyphal length reached maximum in March. These microbial successions are assessed in relation to the decomposition process of the compost in the soil and the importance of oligotrophs, which can grow only under poor nutrient conditions, is noted.

A total of 350 tetracycline-resistant (Tc r ) bacteria were isolated from livestock feces, farmyard manure (FYM), and soil in Japan. The isolates were classified into 28 established genera of the phyla Actinobacteria, Bacteriodetes, Firmicutes and Proteobacteria by studying partial 16S rRNA gene sequences. PCR analysis revealed that 249 of the 350 Tc r isolates contained at least 1 of 15 Tc r genes (tet genes): 140 isolates contained an efflux pump gene and 109 isolates contained a ribosomal protection protein (RPP) gene. The predominant fecal isolates were identified as members of the genera Enterococcus and Escherichia, carrying tet(M) and tet(H), respectively. The predominant soil isolates were identified as members of the genera Burkholderia and Afipia, carrying tet(Z) and tet(B), respectively. This study is the first to describe the presence of tet genes in members of the genera Bordetella, Bradyrhizobium, Burkholderia, Dyella, Flexibacter, Kurthia, Luteibacter, Lysobacter, "Nordella", Ochrobactrum, Pediococcus, Rhodopseudomonas, and Vagococcus. It has revealed that tet genes are distributed in much more diverse phylogenetic groups of bacteria in the environment than has been reported previously.

In this paper, we constructed a shape reconstruction algorithm using a finite element (FE) model of the target structure, taking advantage of characteristics of the distributed strain data, which was acquired from a Brillouin-scattering-based optical fiber sensor. The remarkable point is that, using not only raw strain data but also information of the non-uniformity of strain distribution profiles, the algorithm appropriately considers the data reliability for accurate shape reconstructions. The constructed algorithm was applied to the reconstruction of the deflection of a composite laminate specimen, in which an optical fiber network was embedded. The results indicated that reconstruction accuracy was greatly improved by using weight values determined from the non-uniformity index of the strain distribution profile for each data point. Moreover, we demonstrated that the prior information of identification parameters, which were the node-displacements of the FE model, could be provided for accurate shape reconstructions of complex deformations using the non-uniformity index.

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