Ground-based active optical sensors (GBAOS) have been successfully used in agriculture to predict crop yield potential (YP) early in the season and to improvise N rates for optimal crop yield. However, the models were found weak or inconsistent due to environmental variation especially rainfall. The objectives of the study were to evaluate if GBAOS could predict YP across multiple locations, soil types, cultivation systems, and rainfall differences. This study was carried from 2011 to 2013 on corn (Zea mays L.) in North Dakota, and in 2017 in potatoes in Maine. Six N rates were used on 50 sites in North Dakota and 12 N rates on two sites, one dryland and one irrigated, in Maine. Two active GBAOS used for this study were GreenSeeker and Holl

Objectives Bromelain is a potent proteolytic enzyme that has a unique functionality makes it valuable for various therapeutic purposes. This study aimed to develop three novel formulations based on bromelain to be used as chemomechanical caries removal agents. Methods The novel agents were prepared using different concentrations of bromelain (10–40 wt. %), with and without 0.1–0.3 wt. % chloramine T or 0.5–1.5 wt. % chlorhexidine (CHX). Based on the enzymatic activity test, three formulations were selected; 30 % bromelain (F1), 30 % bromelain-0.1 % chloramine (F2) and 30 % bromelain-1.5 % CHX (F3). The assessments included molecular docking, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), viscosity and pH measurements. The efficiency

Incorporating waste byproducts into concrete is an innovative and promising way to minimize the environmental impact of waste material while maintaining and/or improving concrete’s mechanical characteristics and strength. The proper application of sawdust as a pozzolan in the building industry remains a significant challenge. Consequently, this study conducted an experimental evaluation of sawdust as a fill material. In particular, sawdust as a fine aggregate in concrete offers a realistic structural and economical possibility for the construction of lightweight structural systems. Failure under four-point loads was investigated for six concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) specimens. The results indicated that recycled lightweight co

The present work folds two qualitative objectives; the first focuses on investigating the multiplicity of motivation-based human needs in Little Bee. The second objective involves examining the linguistic forms adopted to disclose such needs. Consequently, the researchers are to adapt eclectically Alderfer's Existence, Relatedness, and Growth Theory (1969) and Langacker’s theory of Domains (1987) together with his Active Zone Operation (1991). Such a study helps to embody the connectivity between the social and psychological aspects, and the way these two aspects are disclosed using particular linguistic The study has concluded that Bee needed Alderfer’s basic human needs: existence, relatedness, and growth. Besides, satisfying

Electromyogram (EMG)-based Pattern Recognition (PR) systems for upper-limb prosthesis control provide promising ways to enable an intuitive control of the prostheses with multiple degrees of freedom and fast reaction times. However, the lack of robustness of the PR systems may limit their usability. In this paper, a novel adaptive time windowing framework is proposed to enhance the performance of the PR systems by focusing on their windowing and classification steps. The proposed framework estimates the output probabilities of each class and outputs a movement only if a decision with a probability above a certain threshold is achieved. Otherwise (i.e., all probability values are below the threshold), the window size of the EMG signa

This article presents a new cascaded extended state observer (CESO)-based sliding-mode control (SMC) for an underactuated flexible joint robot (FJR). The control of the FJR has many challenges, including coupling, underactuation, nonlinearity, uncertainties and external disturbances, and the noise amplification especially in the high-order systems. The proposed control integrates the CESO and SMC, in which the CESO estimates the states and disturbances, and the SMC provides the system robustness to the uncertainty and disturbance estimation errors. First, a dynamic model of the FJR is derived and converted from an underactuated form to a canonical form via the Olfati transformation and a flatness approach, which reduces the complexity of th