Green Thumb Research Articles

Green Thumb, Rich Harvest: Exploring Bioactive Compounds in Horticulture

Horticulture, beyond its aesthetic allure, unveils a world rich in bioactive compounds with profound implications for human health and environmental sustainability. This abstract explores the diverse array of bioactive compounds found in horticultural crops and their potential benefits. Phytochemicals, such as phenolics, flavonoids, alkaloids, and terpenoids, are key players, contributing to plant defense mechanisms and human health. Polyphenols, including flavonoids, exhibit antioxidant properties, reducing the risk of chronic diseases. Glucosinolates in cruciferous vegetables showcase anticancer potential, while essential oils in aromatic herbs offer antimicrobial benefits. Importantly, the cultivation and consumption of bioactiverich horticultural crops promote sustainable agriculture by reducing chemical inputs and enhancing biodiversity. By harnessing the therapeutic potential of nature's pharmacy, horticulture emerges as a pivotal force in fostering human wellbeing and environmental resilience.

Wasabi Gone Wild? Origin and Characterization of the Complete Plastomes of Ulleung Island Wasabi (Eutrema japonicum; Brassicaceae) and Other Cultivars in Korea.

Korean wasabi occurs naturally on the young oceanic, volcanic Ulleung Island off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula. Although the Ulleung Island wasabi is reported as Eutrema japonicum and has been suggested to be morphologically identical to cultivars in Korea, very little is known about its taxonomic identity and relationship with other cultivars. In this study, we sequenced the complete chloroplast DNA sequences of three naturally occurring Ulleung Island wasabi plants and six cultivars ('Daewang', 'Daruma', 'Micado', 'Orochi', 'Green Thumb', and 'Shogun') from continental Korea and determined the taxonomic identity of Korean wasabi on Ulleung Island. The size and organization of the complete chloroplast genomes of the nine accessions were nearly identical to those of previously reported wasabi cultivars. In addition, phylogenetic analysis based on the complete plastomes suggested that Ulleung Island wasabi most likely comprises various wasabi cultivars with three chlorotypes ('Shogun', 'Green Thumb', and a unique Chusan type). Based on the complete plastomes, we identified eight chlorotypes for the major wasabi cultivars and the Ulleung Island wasabi. Two major groups (1-'Mazuma' and 'Daruma', and 2-'Fujidaruma'/'Shimane No. 3'/Ulleung Island wasabi/five cultivars in Korea) were also identified based on mother line genealogical history. Furthermore, different types of variations (mutations, insertions/deletions (indels), mononucleotide repeats, and inversions) in plastomes were identified to distinguish different cultivar lines and five highly divergent hotspots. The nine newly obtained complete plastomes are valuable organelle genomic resources for species identification and infraspecific phylogeographic studies on wild and cultivated wasabi.

Green thumbs at work: Boosting employee eco-participation through ecocentric leadership, green crafting, and green human resource management

Drawing on the social exchange theory, we examined a sequential mediation process linking “ecocentric leadership” and “employees' voluntary green behavior”. We also considered the aspects of “green crafting” and employees' “thriving at work” in association with “ecocentric leadership” and “employees' voluntary green behavior”. On the basis of data from 438 employees employed in Pakistan's textile industry, green crafting mediates the relationship amid “ecocentric leadership” and “employees' thriving at work”. We also established that “green crafting” and employees' “thriving at work” serially mediate the association between “ecocentric leadership” and “employees' voluntary green behavior”. “Green human resource management” practices were also a significant moderator in the “green crafting”-“voluntary green behavior” relationship providing support for the combined effect of “green human resource management” practices and “green crafting” in augmenting “thriving at work”. The findings of the study provide significant theoretical and managerial inferences to enable organizations to implement green human resource practices effectively and enable their voluntary green behavior by facilitating them to thrive at work.

Tistou: The Boy with the Green Thumbs of Peace by Maurice Druon (review)

Tistou: The Boy with the Green Thumbs of Peace by Maurice Druon (review)

Don’t Forget to Water Your Antennas! [Editor’s Comments

Everyone with just a bit of a green thumb will tell you that water can do miracles for a well-maintained lawn. Sometimes, however, water can also do great things for antennas. Please check out the article by Kong et al. focusing on a frequency-selective structure that can be controlled using water channels. The article starts with an introduction that reviews the concept of frequency-selective surfaces. Then it turns to the new design concept, providing both analytic and numerical evidence in support of the new idea. Finally, the contribution is enriched with experimental results confirming the performance of the technology, showing its practical interest. This issue of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine</i> also features many other interesting articles. Surender et al. presents a nice review of rectennas for applications in wireless technologies. The work starts with a rich bibliographic analysis. It then reviews the primary elements of a rectenna system, examining the main solutions available in literature. Finally, attention is turned to applications, with a detailed list of relevant scenarios analyzed in large detail. The article by Notaros <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ˇ</small> is an excellent review of polarimetric weather radars. The article starts by illustrating the principles of radar polarimetry, then it proceeds with technical analyses of specific devices, and finally the contribution turns to applications, showing the data richness that can be provided by polarimetry and its applicability to weather analysis and forecasts. Finally, the article by Loghmannia and Manteghi presents a broadband strategy for small-antenna matching by an amplifier. After a bibliographic review and a section summarizing the relevant background material, the article reviews the principles of broadband parametric matching and presents an antenna design enriched with validating simulations. Finally, a prototype with experimental validations is presented showing achievable performance of the technology.

Growing Seeds, Minds, and Community: A Case Study Evaluation of the Green Thumb Project’s Youth Internship Program

Urban community gardens are often home to a variety of environmental education programs. One such program centered in a community garden is the Youth Internship Program created by The Green Thumb Project. Through mixed methods techniques and a case study approach, the Youth Internship Program’s immediate outcomes were evaluated by assessing 12 participants’ changes in career preparedness skills, healthy living attitudes, and content knowledge after participating in the eight-week long curriculum. Outcomes were assessed through the lens of situated learning theory and its relation to place-based environmental education. Through analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data, results indicated that the Youth Internship Program was effective in positively changing all interns’ skills, attitudes, and knowledge. Linear regressions showed that skills, attitudes, and knowledge had significant positive relationships with one another. This finding indicated that the themes were interconnected and that learning gains in one area helped interns experience gains in another area. Overall, the data demonstrated that the program was effective in helping interns grow personally, professionally, and academically.

Memorialising COVID-19

Memorialising COVID-19

Maurice Druon’s Tistou and His Green Thumbs: A Leap from Egophilia to Ecophilia

An illegitimate son of a Russian Jewish immigrant, born in Paris on April 23, 1918 and one of the France’s most prolific men of letters, Maurice Druon made a name for himself as a patriotic egophiliac. Through his critically acclaimed series of historical novels, Les Rois Maudits, and Les Grandes Familles, for example, he intended to revive the long-lost French medieval egotistic glory. With his wartime resistance hymn, “Chant des Partisans”, which he and his uncle, Joseph Kessel, adapted from the Russian-born troubadour Anna Marly’s lyric song, he infused a strong sense of ego in the French fighters against the German wartime occupiers. It was for all such contributions to nation building and for his unflinching determination to promote French linguistic and political culture that he was made Minister of Cultural Affairs in Pierre Messmer’s cabinet (1973-1974), a Deputy of Paris (1978-1981) and a ‘perpetual secretary’ of the Académie Francaise. But in between his writing Les Rois Maudits, as he said in the preface to the story, he wanted to try his hands in something else and ended up writing Tistou Les Pouces Verts. This paper makes use of the properties of ecocritical theory in order to investigate the importance of Maurice Druon’s stride from egotistic to eco-conscious writing meant for children.

Must Have Been A Lie

Must Have Been A Lie

An Ecocritical Reading of D. H. Lawrence’s TheRainbow

This paper intends to analyze the Ecological elements in D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow. It investigates the treatment of nature and how man and nature exchange mutual effects, through three generations, as man moves from rural to industrial era. It traces how the three generations of the Brangwens live in contradictions as they live in a transitional era from country life to city life. The environmental awareness of the Brangwens characters make them sensitive to their natural surroundings. Although the first generation women were attracted to the industrial lights, Ursula returns to nature to be in direct connection with nature. Ursula's unity with nature represents human survival from the industrial capitalist civilization. This attitude towards nature mirrors Lawrence's sound ecological inclinations. Lawrence denounces modern intellectual way of life based on dead mechanical principles. He uses his fiction, particularly The Rainbow, as a means to formulate and theorize his nostalgic doctrine of the organic, blood intimacy of nature as a contrast to the anarchy and apocalypse of modern life. He shows very early awareness of the dangers of modern industry and prophetically anticipated the late 20th century ecocriticism. He has a green thumb to point at the man-nature relationship. It discloses how Lawrence artistically reveals the dreadful effects caused by environmental crisis on nature world. It takes these two masterpieces of Lawrence as a model to show the of industrialism on imaginational literary mind, the description of nature in literature, the abuses of nature under the damaging hand of the human being, the ecofeminism that analyses the parallel between the oppressed women and oppressed nature.&#x0D; &#x0D; KEY WORDS:Ecocriticism, nature, industry, The Rainbow, ecofeminism. &#x0D;

In Case You Haven't Heard…

Warwick, New York, will have a cannabis cultivation site soon, with construction already underway by Green Thumb Industries of Chicago. The location is on the site of a former prison, where there is already a greenhouse and processing facility. The company has invested $150 million to remodel the site, which will create 100 construction jobs and 100 permanent positions with benefits, according to an article in the Sept. 9 Times‐Union. Green Thumb purchased the 40 acres of former prison grounds for $3.3 million in May, after Orange County approved a 15‐year tax abatement. The $3.3 million covered the town's remaining debt on the cost of the purchase of the prison property from the state. The town is not ready, however, to allow on‐site cannabis consumption at its cafes or to allow marijuana dispensaries at all.

A new Turing test: metaphor vs. nonsense.

My basic argument is that a computer cannot distinguish between metaphor and nonsense. This would be my new “Turing Test.” I was very fond of a particular Italian poem, but I was told by an Italian friend that it was a hackneyed poem of little worth. I then taught myself to experience the poem alternately, as real poetry and as the silly nonsense that my friend claimed it really was. Having done so, I realized that I could do the same with any metaphor, such as “having a green thumb.” Thinking about the nature of this switch, from the literal to the metaphorical, I also realized that it was the sort of change that could not be prescribed or even described: this, the basic aesthetic gesture, remains beyond the boundary of logical definition. It then dawned on me that it might provide a test for the validity of a “Turing Test,” by any definition. Can a computer track a mind as it goes through this transformation? I could not envisage such a possibility. This would be a “Turing Test” based on the discipline of aesthetics rather than on technology. It may even be argued that the ability to experience metaphor is the very definition of the human.

Green Thumb

This essay explores the author's sense of being different from her family and thus submitting a DNA test. At the same time, the author is also establishing a garden in a new climate, which, although challenging, connects her to the memory of her long-dead grandfather.

Heart Grows Fonder.

Description This painting was inspired by one patient's mindfulness practice that he developed to cope with depression of a recent loved one's death. Similar to my family of green thumbs, this patient found catharsis in cultivating his late wife's garden of fruits and vegetables after her death. Through mental health practices such as meditation and exercise, a person has a chance to process and heal from difficult circumstances.

First report of wasabi mottle virus causing ringspot and vein-clearing symptoms on wasabi (Wasabia japonica) in North America

Symptoms of ringspots and vein-clearing were observed on wasabi (Wasabia japonica (Miq) Matsum) plants in three greenhouses in British Columbia during 2017. Ten indicator plant species, including four Nicotiana species, were inoculated with sap extracts from symptomatic leaves; after 4–11 days, necrotic lesions developed on all plants. Transmission electron microscopy revealed rod-shaped virions, 250–300 nm in length, in leaves of N. occidentalis and N. clevelandii. Total RNA from symptomatic wasabi tissues was used in RT-PCR with universal primers corresponding to five virus genera and specific primers for turnip ringspot virus and alfalfa mosaic virus. Amplicons ~400 bp in size were obtained with tobamovirus primer set TobN up3/TobN do4 and amplicons of ~300 and ~600 bp were obtained with ilarvirus primer set Ilar1F5/Ilar1R7. Sequencing and MegaBLAST (NCBI) query of the Ilar amplicons showed 99% identity to wasabi mottle virus (WMoV), a member of the genus Tobamovirus. Next-generation Sequencing confirmed WMoV as the only virus present in diseased plants. BC isolates (GenBank accession no. MK431779) showed 99.43% sequence identity to isolate ‘Alishan’ (GenBank accession no. KJ207375.1) and 98.62% identity to ‘Tochigi’ strain (GenBank accession no. AB017504.1). Mechanical inoculation of wasabi cultivars ‘Green Thumb’ and ‘Daruma’ produced ringspots and vein-clearing symptoms after 22–23 days on the former while the latter was asymptomatic, but WMoV was detected in all plants by RT-PCR. WMoV may have been introduced into Canada on imported infected ‘Green Thumb’ plants and subsequently spread through commercial vegetative propagation. The effects on yield or rhizome quality are yet unknown.

Field

Field Emily Jungmin Yoon (bio) All my friends who loved trees are now dead,my grandmother said, and now she is. She had a green thumb. She loved medical shows.How can you see all that blood, all that cutting? I asked. She said, I wanted to become a doctor. She wanted to travel the world. She taped the worldmap on her table, drew a line from Chicago to Busan. She loved me. She was tired of living. I wanted to pretend. Be protected from her death. In the Field Museum, I stroll among Birds of America,life-size paintings of specimen doing what they do: a pair of long-billed curlews, standing next to tall grass.A roseate spoonbill, twisting toward water. Audubon went through great troubles, observing them flyingand look after their young, then somehow, killing these birds. Now here I am, observing the pretendportraits,protected from the blood, the cutting. Walking through the taxidermy wing, I see more animalswho loved trees, who died to pretend. Just last month, taking turns pouring dirt over her coffin,her children commented how she chose the perfect day to go: a warm Saturday with blue skies, too warm, in fact, for January. [End Page 117] She is so good at forecasting the weather, my uncle praised,as if she was just in another wing. Her grave is contracted for 50 years, another thing I learned then-- where our bodies lie are temporary exhibits.In the Intensive Care Unit before her death, I was annoyed at how beautiful the nurse was, standingnext to my grandmother's swollen hands and feet, at her foundation, curly eyelashes, roseate blush,her life painted into display. Then, I was ashamed. After my grandmother died, my mother entered the morgue,the only one out of her children. She watched the body getting cleaned and dressed.She observed the blues and greens of a dead body, its cold limbs twisting out. She curled out my grandmother's dried lips, then, with her makeup, started painting her. [End Page 118] Emily Jungmin Yoon Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species (Ecco, 2018), winner of the 2019 Devil's Kitchen Reading Award and finalist for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Ordinary Misfortunes (Tupelo Press, 2017), winner of the Sunken Garden Chapbook Prize. She has also translated and edited a chapbook of poems, Against Healing: Nine Korean Poets (Tilted Axis, 2019). Individual poems and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, POETRY, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. She has accepted awards and fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Ploughshares' Emerging Writers Contest, AWP's WC&C Scholarship Competition, and elsewhere. She is the Poetry Editor for The Margins, the literary magazine of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and a PhD candidate in Korean literature at the University of Chicago. Copyright © 2020 Pleiades and Pleiades Press

Iot Based Garden Monitoring System

In an agricultural country like India a lot of people will work with green thumb in mind. Most of the people loves to grow plants at home, but due to their work schedule they very often take care of plants. The only solution to this problem is smart monitoring of the plant growth by modernizing the current traditional methods of gardening. Hence the proposed system targets at smart way of monitoring the plant growth using automation and IoT technologies. Internet of things (IoT) provides various applications for crop growth and monitoring the growth conditions. Main theme of this paper is to increase the plant growth condition by maintaining the suitable moisture level and temperature with the use of moisture sensor and temperature sensor. This paper works for the crop development at low quantity water consumption by providing an automatic watering system to the user. People often waste lot of time for watering the plants so an efficient management of water should be developed. The proposed system will work based on the information send by the sensors and so proper growth for the plant will be estimated. With the help of the moisture sensor and temperature sensor details like moisture content and the temperature will be obtained and so based on those reading automatic watering will be done. The major advantage of this system is to make a suitable environment for plant growth and also to minimize the water consumption.

Growth, Flowering, and Powdery Mildew-related Responses of Witchhazels in Tennessee

Witchhazel (Hamamelis sp.) cultivars are now available in an array of forms and flower colors, including several native, pollinator-friendly cultivars. However, little is known about response of witchhazel cultivars to powdery mildew (Podosphaera biuncinata) or the growth and flowering characteristics of witchhazel cultivars in a nursery field production setting. To provide growth, flowering, and disease incidence data to nursery growers, a cultivar trial including 23 cultivars of witchhazel representing five species was planted Apr. 2016 in McMinnville, TN. Plant growth, flowering density, length of bloom, and foliar disease incidence were evaluated over three growing seasons between May 2016 and Oct. 2018. ‘Zuccariniana’ japanese witchhazel (H. japonica) and ‘Sunglow’ common witchhazel (H. virginiana) showed the greatest height increase during the trial, and ‘Sunglow’ also added the most width during the trial. Cultivars with negative height or width growth included Sweet Sunshine chinese witchhazel (H. mollis) and hybrid witchhazels (H. ×intermedia) Aphrodite, Twilight, and Barmstedt Gold. Ten of the 23 cultivars experienced winter injury in the form of stem necrosis. Root crown sprouts were observed for all cultivars at least once during the trial. ‘Wisely Supreme’ chinese witchhazel had the longest bloom period, followed by ‘Westerstede’ and ‘Twilight’ hybrid witchhazels, whereas ‘Quasimodo’ vernal witchhazel (H. vernalis) had the greatest density of flowers. The hybrid witchhazel cultivars Aphrodite, Nina, and Arnold Promise and the common witchhazel cultivars Green Thumb and Sunglow were resistant to powdery mildew under trial conditions in all 3 years. ‘Twilight’ and ‘Barmstedt Gold’ hybrid witchhazel, ‘Little Suzie’ common witchhazel, ‘Wisley Supreme’ chinese witchhazel, and ‘Shibamichi Red’ japanese witchhazel were moderately resistant to powdery mildew.

H-104 ATL, ADF and human virus research

Prehistory of ATL Discovery and ADF/TRX. More than 40 years have passed since our initial description of peculiar cases of adult-onset leukemia with abnormal cells having multi-convoluted nuclei and T cellproperties, frequent in the southern regions of Japan in the early 1970s. In the initiation of Adult T-Cell Leukemia (ATL) research, both of my mentors Drs. Kimishige Ishizaka and Kiyoshi Takatsuki have been involved. Dr. Kiyoshi Takatsuki was a kind of hero of our medical school in B cell malignancy multiple myeloma and Heavy Chain Diseases. Dr. Kimishige Ishizaka, Discoverer of Immunoglobulin E (IgE) reaginic antibody, and Dr. Takatsuki had been working in the field of Immunoglobulin and myeloma proteins with great pioneers including late H Kunkel, and EF Osserman. Before my first description of ATL Cases with Dr. Takatsuki and the active instruction of late Dr. Toru Masuda in the Institute for Virus Res (IVR) of Kyoto Univ. returning from the Late Dr. L Herzenberg in Stanford Univ., I had been involved in the study of peculior myeloma-related disease, POEMS Syndrome/Takatsuki Disease/Crow-Fukase Syndrome. The POEMS Syndrome are characterized by polyneuropathy, organomegaly, endocrinopathy, myeloma protein, and skin changes. Drs. Y. Nishitani and Late M. Fukase in Kyoto Univ. also contributed in this Takatsuki Disease/Syndrome research. Indeed, Dr. Takatsuki was a kind of hero of our medical school in B cell malignancy multiple myeloma and HeavyChain Diseases, before ATL and HTLV. Retrospectively, the study of adult T cell leukemia (ATL) and the related virus HTLV-I was a forerunner for all of human retrovirology, in which AIDS and the related retrovirus HIV were identified a few years later in the 1980s. I remember the great contribution of late Dr. Yohei Ito, who had initiated the cooperative interaction between Kyoto and Dr. Gallo in NCI in 70's. Using the anti-TAC monoclonal antibody generated by the late Dr. Takashi Uchiyama, my close colleague, during his stay in Dr. T. A. Waldmann's laboratory in NIH Bethesda, a cDNA encoding IL-2Ra chain was cloned by our group in Kyoto and by Waldmann's group in Bethesda. Abnormal IL-2Ra chain expression and the IL-2 dependency of ATL cell lines greatly contributed to the study of leukemogenesis of ATL. A new soluble factor named ADF/ATL-derived factor was also detected in ATL cell lines. Dr. Michiyuki Maeda greatly contributed establishing many ATL cell lines with his green thumb. After years of study, ADF proved to be a first human counterpart of thiol-related oxido-reductase thioredoxin/TRX, which opened the field of redox regulation of cell signaling involved in a variety of diseases. Quite interestingly, TRX-family member protein, GIF/MIF involved in the IgE regulation was characterized by the group of Dr. K. Ishizaka who have moved from J. Hopkins Univ. Baltimore to La Jolla, LIAI. Close interaction among Drs. Kimishige Ishizaka, Kiyoshi Takastuki and T. A. Waldmanns before ATL and HTLV-I study was an essential base for our initiation of ATL research with late Takashi Uchiyama and many other close colleagues. I remember Dr. Gallo's helpful comment on the importance of the 3 Letter naming of ATL and ADF. In the therapeutic directions of ATL, monoclonal antibody seems to be still struggle: (1) Anti-Tac IL-2Ra Chain Therapies have been geared by TA Waldmann Group with many coworkers. However, the therapeutic effectiveness may be limited; (2) Anti-CCR4 mAbs applied to ATL cases by Dr. R Ueda Group in Japan is therapeutically effective. However high frequency of severe side effect namely Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (SJS/TEN) have been reported. I may recall great contribution of late Drs. Takashi Uchiyama, Mitsuru Tsudo, Kazumasa Usami in Kyoto Univ. and Thomas Tursz of IGR Paris in our early ATL and ADF research. This paper is also dedicated for late Dr. Kimishige Ishizaka, discoverer of IgE and my great mentor close to Dr. Kiyoshi Takatsuki.

Greenthumb's Lawn and Design (a)

Friends Parker and Miles are brainstorming the possibilities of a local start-up—a landscaping venture that leverages their love of the outdoors and their self-taught green thumb skills in planting, mowing, edging, trimming, landscape design, and the like. Without any formal professional or business training, however, they strategize and slowly work through their “next steps,” taking into account the cost of their initial investment, potential competitors, target customers, and the type of budget-friendly advertising that will gain them a share of the local market. As they conceptually differentiate themselves in a way that creates business and customer value, are they ready to launch? Excerpt UVA-ENT-0210 Rev. Apr. 26, 2019 GreenThumb's Lawn and Design (A) Coffee Shop Plans Parker and Miles had been friends throughout high school. They had been through the ups and downs of life together and shared many memories—like the state basketball competition, school dances and parties, and of course, math class with the most attractive female math teacher in the county. After graduation, they had both attended community college and finished their associate degrees, but each had determined that a four-year degree was not their best path. Both Parker and Miles had worked since the age of 16—at retail jobs, as baggers at the local grocery store, and in the local car dealership's service center. While both men had a strong work ethic and a desire to learn, none of their jobs had led to a career path. Most recently, Parker had served six months in the county jail for distribution of marijuana—a “job” he was anxious to find an alternative to, now that he had been released on unsupervised parole for good behavior. Shortly after his release, the two friends (who were now 22) met up at a local coffee shop. Miles had just left his most recent employment—as a cashier at the local fast-food restaurant. They started mulling over their next best steps. Parker asked his friend, “Why don't we start a landscaping business?” “We both like to work outside,” he continued. “After working at the car dealership in the repair shop for so long, I can fix anything with a motor. We both have pickup trucks, and I can weld together some steel on a two-by-four platform to make a trailer for us to use. We could buy up a half-dozen used mowers and other power tools, and fix them when they break. It wouldn't cost us more than a couple hundred bucks each in startup money. And you know all there is to know about pruning trees and shrubs and planting flowers from your dad.” . . .