The plant microbiome has been considered one of the most researched areas of microbial biodiversity, yet very little information is available on the microbial communities prevailing in the mushroom's ectomycorrhizosphere. Ectomycorrhizal symbioses often result in the formation of a favourable niche which enables the thriving of various microbial symbionts where these symbionts endorse functions, such as quorum sensing, biofilm formation, volatile microbial compound (VOC) production, regulation of microbial gene expression, symbiosis and virulence. The identification of hidden uncultured microbial communities around the active ectomycorrhizal zone of Astraeus from dry deciduous sal forest of Jharkhand, India was carried out using MinION Oxford Nanopore sequencing of 16S rRNA amplicons genes. High richness of Operational Taxonomic Units (1,905 OTUs) was observed. We recorded 25 distinct phyla. Proteobacteria (36%) was the most abundant phylum, followed by Firmicutes (28%), Actinobacteria (10%) and Bacteroidetes (6%), whereas Gammaproteobacteria was the most abundant class of bacterial communities in the active ectomycorrhizal zone. The ectomycorrhizosphere soil has abundant phosphate-solubilising bacteria (PSB). This is the first report of the ectomycorrhizosphere microbiome associated with Astraeus.

The present paper describes the methodology and results of assessment of seasonal progress of rice stubble burning for 10 major rice growing districts of Haryana state in India. These 10 districts contribute about 84 per cent of total rice area of the state. As the rice fields are immediately required to be vacated for the sowing of next crop the farmers opt for mechanized harvesting and easy way out of burning the stubbles in the field. Such burning result in release of polluting gases and aerosols. Besides, the heating of the soil kills the useful micro-flora of the soil causing soil degradation. Multi-date AWiFS data from Resourcesat 1 and 2 satellites acquired between October 16, 2013 to November 26, 2013 were used for estimating paddy stubble burning areas at different intervals for the year 2013 crop growing season. In season collected ground truth data using hand held GPS along with field photographs were used to identify paddy stubble burning areas and other land features. Complete enumeration approach and Iterative Self-organizing Data Analysis Technique (ISODATA) unsupervised classifier was used for digital analysis. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of each date was also used with other spectral bands of temporal images. To improve the classification accuracy the non-agricultural areas were masked out. The area was estimated by computing pixels under the classified image mask. Progress of paddy stubble burning was estimated at different intervals for the year 2013 using available cloud free multi-date IRS-P6 AWiFS data to identify the crucial period when stubbles burning takes place in major area so that preventive measures can be taken to curb the menace.

Impact ionization has been seen to effect pinchoff in wafer-bonded aperture vertical electron transistors (BAVETs) comprising an InGaAs channel wafer-bonded to a III-nitride (III-N) drift region. The InGaAs-III-N junction is referred to as the wafer-bonded interface (WBI). Field plating can work well to manage the peak field and related impact ionization; however, it comes with a tradeoff of increased on-resistance. In this paper, another control knob to breakdown is explored in the critical field (ξCRIT_IMPCT) of a BAVET. Investigation focuses on the characteristics of devices that differ in their InAlAs doping profile, namely p-type, unintentional, or a combination of both. These devices are tested for the role of field plate, built-in voltage, and trap behavior on pinchoff. It is shown that the change of doping causes a dramatic change to the trap activity at WBI. These traps ionize and determine ξCRIT_IMPCT as ionization of traps that leads to an early onset of impact ionization in the channel, which weakens pinchoff in a BAVET. Passivating traps is proposed to be a method to improving pinchoff. Trap passivation of WBI is demonstrated if InAlAs is doped p-type rather than unintentionally. A consequent enhancement in pinchoff and breakdown voltage of a BAVET is also reported.

High frequency and high power are the driving forces behind semiconductor transistor technology. However, conventional devices have the tradeoff of either being high speed or high breakdown—but not both. Wafer-bonded current aperture vertical electron transistors (BAVETs) help eliminate the tradeoff by combining a high-speed III-As channel to a high-breakdown III-N drift region. The device presented herein comprises of an InAlAs gate-barrier/InGaAs channel, wafer-bonded to an InGaN/GaN drift region, with the InGaAs/InGaN interface referred to as the wafer-bonded interface (WBI). The electronic behavior of WBIs is yet less known but necessary in realizing the potential of a BAVET. Herein, strong trap activity at the WBI is shown to be the cause of abnormally high saturation voltage ( $\textit{V}_{\text{DS\_SAT}}$ ) in BAVETs. The traps cause unintentional space charge (SC) region in the drain region of the device. This causes a drain resistance, a higher ON-resistance ( R $_{\text{ON}}$ ), and a higher $\textit{V}_{\text{DS\_SAT}}$ . The challenge is overcome by hydrogen passivation of traps at WBI by using a p-doping for the InAlAs layer, which reduces the trap-charge concentration at the WBI. Consequently, the width of the SC region is reduced and a reduction in $\textit{V}_{\text{DS\_SAT}}$ is demonstrated, wherein it reduces from $>$ 12 to 5 V.