The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of a forest environment on salivary cortisol concentration, particularly on the characteristics of its distribution. The participants were 348 young male subjects. The experimental sites were 34 forests and 34 urban areas across Japan. The subjects viewed the landscape (forest or urban environment) for a period of 15 min while sitting in a chair. Saliva was sampled from the participants at the end of this 15-min period and then analyzed for cortisol concentration. Differences in the skewness and kurtosis of the distributions between the two environments were tested by performing a permutation test. The cortisol concentrations exhibited larger skewness (0.76) and kurtosis (3.23) in a forest environment than in an urban environment (skewness = 0.49; kurtosis = 2.47), and these differences were statistically significant. The cortisol distribution exhibited a more peaked and longer right-tailed curve in a forest environment than in an urban environment.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14080931 | DOI Listing |
AoB Plants
January 2025
CNRS, UMR Ecologie des Forêt de Guyane (EcoFoG), AgroParisTech, CIRAD, INRAE, Université des Antilles, Université de Guyane, 97310 Kourou, France.
Phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) play important roles in plant metabolism and hydraulic balance, respectively, while calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) are important components of cell walls. Although significant amounts of these nutrients are found in wood, relatively little is known on how the wood concentrations of these nutrients are related to other wood traits, or on the factors driving the resorption of these nutrients within stems. We measured wood nutrient (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFiScience
January 2025
Key Laboratory for Environmental Factors Control of Agro-product Quality Safety (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs), Tianjin Key Laboratory of Agro-environment and Safe-product, Institute of Agro-environmental Protection, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tianjin 300191, China.
Nitrogen-fixing microorganisms (NFMs) are important components of soil N sinks and are influenced by multiple environmental factors. We established a random forest model optimized by the distributed delayed particle swarm optimization (RODDPSO) algorithm to analyze the global NFM data. Soil pH, organic carbon (OC), mean annual precipitation (MAP), altitude, and total phosphorus (TP) are factors with contributions greater than 10% to NFMs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnn Bot
January 2025
Unit of Ecological Genetics, Institute of Forest Biodiversity and Nature Conservation, Austrian Research Centre for Forests (BFW), Seckendorff-Gudent-Weg 8, Vienna, Vienna.
Background And Aims: Torminalis glaberrima (Gand.) Sennikov & Kurtto is a European tree species currently underutilized in forestry, valued for its high-quality wood and contribution to ecosystem stability. Despite a projected range expansion as climate change progresses, current population fragmentation levels may inhibit the species' ability to migrate and stabilize fragile forest ecosystems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Hered
January 2025
Department of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz; Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
The Pacific banana slug, Ariolimax columbianus, is endemic to the forests of the Pacific Northern West. Found throughout coastal foothills and mountains of California, the hermaphroditic molluscs Ariolimax spp. are niche-constrained, hyper-localized, and phenotypically diverse.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFood Res Int
February 2025
Nottingham Ningbo China Beacons of Excellence Research and Innovation Institute, University of Nottingham Ningbo, Ningbo 315100, China. Electronic address:
Xylooligosaccharides (XOS), short-chain polymers with prebiotic properties, have gained significant commercial attention over the past few decades due to their potential as nutraceutical components. Derived from lignocellulosic biomass (LCB), XOS serve as health promoting compounds with applications across multiple sectors, including food pharmaceutical and cosmetic. This comprehensive review provides an overview of XOS production, purification, characterization, and quantification, highlighting their derivation from various sources such as agricultural waste, agro-economical forest residues, and nutrient-dense energy crops.
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