We investigated the effects on various crops of inoculation with species of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in soils from different sources and selected AMF species suitable for domestic environment-friendly farming. Effects on plants varied with the AMF species used. In carrot, Scutellospora heterogama, Acaulospora longula, and Funneliformis mosseae had a positive effect on growth of the host, whereas AMF had only weak effects on the growth of red pepper and leek. AMF inoculation had positive effects on the growth of carrot and sorghum. The results of this study indicate the nature of the relationship between soil, plants, and AMF; this study therefore has important implications for the future use of AMF in environment-friendly agriculture.

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We explored how emotional cues presented in visual and haptic modalities interact. We constructed an affective haptic dataset, and used the emotional visual stimuli from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Participants were asked to rate the visual stimuli, haptic stimuli and visualhaptic stimuli. Analysis of the results indicated that the presence of haptic stimulus affects the arousal of the visual stimulus, but does not affect the valence significantly. We further explored this interaction in terms of the intensity, frequency, waveform and rhythm of the haptic stimuli. Finally, we generated a set of guidelines on visual-haptic interaction that could be used to design multimodal affective feedback.

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In this study, we collected rhizosphere soils and root samples from a post-mining area and a natural forest area in Jecheon, Korea. We extracted spores of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) from rhizospheres, and then examined the sequences of 18S rDNA genes of the AMF from the collected roots of plants. We compared the AMF communities in the post-mining area and the natural forest area by sequence analysis of the AMF spores from soils and of the AMF clones from roots. Consequently, we confirmed that the structure of AMF communities varied between the post-mining area and the natural forest area and showed significant relationship with heavy metal contents in soils. These results suggest that heavy metal contamination by mining activity significantly affects the AMF community structure.