Publications by authors named "Avital Bechar"

Background: Environmental concerns are driving the call for adoption of alternative nonchemical weeding approaches. This study aimed to develop and evaluate a novel, precise, low-energy electrophysical treatment weeding systems and to provide new insight into their control mechanism. Two electrophysical treatment systems, based on AC (2.

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Shoulder musculoskeletal disorders due to manual material handling tasks are common workplace injuries. Here we investigated the difference in shoulder biomechanics (moments and angles) between a single task of removing a box from a shelf (or depositing a box on a shelf) and the equivalent part of a combined task that consisted of removing, carrying and depositing boxes; that is, a single [] task was compared with the [] part of a combined task. We found that the peak and cumulative shoulder moments were larger during the single-task paradigm than during the equivalent part of the combined task by 26.

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Digital human modeling software uses biomechanical models to compute workers' risk of injury during industrial work processes. In many cases, the biomechanics are calculated using quasistatic models, which neglect the body's dynamics and therefore might be erroneous. This study investigated the differential effect of using a dynamic vs.

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Electrostatic fields are abundant in the natural environment. We tested the idea that electrostatic attraction forces between tiny whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci) and the substrate could be substantial to the point of limiting their take-off. These insects are characterized by a very small body mass and powerful take-offs that are executed by jumping into the air with the wings closed.

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This study investigated the biomechanical loads and kinematics of workers during multiple-task manual material handling (MMH) jobs, and developed prediction models for the moments acting on a worker's body and their peak joint angles. An experiment was conducted in which 20 subjects performed a total of 3780 repetitions of a box-conveying task. This task included continuous sequential removing, carrying and depositing of boxes weighing 2-12 kg.

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This study compared the spinal moments (i.e., peak and cumulative moments acting on the L5/S1 joint), kinematics (i.

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Tomato spotted wilt virus is a wide-spread plant disease in the world. It can threaten thousands of plants with a persistent and propagative manner. Early disease detection is expected to be able to control the disease spread, to facilitate management practice, and further to guarantee accompanying economic benefits.

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To plan a new manual material handling work process, it is necessary to predict the times required to complete each task. Current time prediction models lack validity when the handled object's mass exceeds 2 kg. In this study, we investigated the effect of workplace design parameters on continuous sequential lifting, carrying, and lowering of boxes weighing from 2 kg to 14 kg.

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The tomato INTENSE PIGMENT (IP) genotype is characterized by intense visual pigmentation of unripe and ripe fruits, not thoroughly analyzed thus far. This study was therefore designed to analyze key morphologic, metabolomic, and photomorphogenic phenotypes of this genotype in comparison to its near-isogenic normal counterpart and to evaluate its significance relative to other tomato mutants known for increased fruit pigmentation. The IP genotype produced smaller and darker red fruits, and a substantially increased chloroplast biogenesis was found in its green fruit and leaf tissues.

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