Volumen 4 (2021): Edición 2 (December 2021)

As essential elements of green spaces and social spaces in cities, urban parks significantly improve the quality of life and promote urban sustainability. Research on the development process of urban parks can be meaningful for coping with the current issues and future opportunities facing cities. This study takes Zhengzhou as the case aiming to outline the development process and characteristics of urban parks within the city. We adopted the empirical analysis to review the evolution processes and trends of Zhengzhou’s urban parks from the perspective of implementation approaches, spatial layout, and functions and uses. Results reveal four subsequent phases: the emergence phase (1949–1977), the growth phase (1978–1996), the acceleration phase (1997–2012), and the promotion phase (after 2012), according to the periods of urban development and the opportunities for green space development. The discussion includes development issues and strategies regarding land use approaches, user group needs, and public participation. The findings may help formulate adaptive and effective policies and planning tools for urban parks and provide a basis for further research on urban parks and Zhengzhou’s road to the ideal “Park City”.

This paper focuses on the environment of Ethiopia, a country highly sensitive to droughts severely affecting vegetation. Vegetation monitoring of Ethiopian Highlands requires visualization of environmental parameters to assess droughts negatively influencing agricultural sustainable management of crops. Therefore, this study presented mapping of several climate and environmental variables including Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). The data were visualized and interpreted alongside the topographic data to evaluate the environmental conditions for vegetation. The datasets included WorldClim and GEBCO and Digital Chart of the World (DCW). Research has threefold objectives: i) environmental mapping; ii) technical cartographic scripting; iii) data processing. Following variables were visualized on seven new maps: 1) topography; 2) soil moisture; 3) T °C minimum; 4) T °C maximum; 5) Wind speed; 6) Precipitation; 7) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). New high-resolution thematic environmental maps are presented and the utility of GMT for mapping multi-source datasets is described. With varying degrees of soil moisture (mean value of 15.0), min T°C (−1.8°C to 24°C), max T°C (14.4°C to 40.2°C) and wind speed (0.1 to 6.1 m/s), the maps demonstrate the variability of the PDSI fields over the country area (from −11.7 to 2.3) induced by the complex sum of these variables and intensified by the topographic effects notable over the Ethiopian Highlands which can be used for vegetation analysis. The paper presents seven new maps and contributes to the environmental studies of Ethiopia.

The poinsettias were cultivated years ago as medicinal and ornamental plants, too; but in the recent time are in the light of world flower assortment surprising with new shapes and colors in the cold season. The ornamental values of these plants are given by bracts which can have the same size as foliage leaves or even larger. The tendency of floral industry consists in obtaining high quality ornamental plants with superior marketable price. In these regards, the role of plant growth retardants in regulating the growth of poinsettia is important to obtain healthy, compact bushes and extended decoration period. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the effects of plant growth retardants on poinsettia. Five treatments with different retardants were applied as drench or spray. In the experiment four replicates and a total of 144 poinsettias were used. Treatments with paclobutrazol (60 mg/l sprayed), daminozide (2500 mg/l sprayed) and chlormequat chloride (1000 mg/l sprayed), showed the best results in case of marketability.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus are known as important nosocomial infectious agents also their co-infections are commonly seen in some patient groups. It is well known that host factors such as hormones have roles in modulation of growth, pathogenesis and susceptibilities to antimicrobials. In our study, the influences of norepinephrine (NE) and melatonin (MEL) on antibiotic susceptibilities were examined in mono and co-culture conditions. Methicilin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) ATCC 43300 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853 were investigated to determine the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentrations (MBC) of ciprofloxacin and gentamicin in the absence/presence of NE (0.0017 and 0.04μg/mL) and MEL (6 and 60 pg/mL) by microdilution method in mono and co-culture. It was found that hormones decreased (among 2-64 fold) MIC and MBC values of both antibiotics for MRSA. However, it was shown that hormones had no effect on MIC values of both antibiotics for P. aeruginosa. MIC and MBC values of both antibiotics for co-culture were found to be reduced compared to monoculture of MRSA; were found to be increased compared to monoculture of P. aeruginosa. Whereas, hormones decreased MIC values of both antibiotics in co-culture conditions. Our results suggest that both hormones decreased MIC values and it seems that hormones could influence antibiotic susceptibilities in a strain-dependent manner.

Romania's medicinal flora is an important source of raw material for pharmacological research and drug production. By consulting the pharmacological literature on authenticated scientific sources such as Google Scholar, 15 species of medicinal plants existing in the Romanian flora, but not used in the traditional Romanian medicine, were identified. In accordance with the World Health Organization's call on all countries to use traditional medicine in primary care, we set out to help complete the list of medicinal plants in Romania using information from traditional medicine in other countries.