High tunnels, or unheated plastic greenhouses, are becoming increasingly popular among organic vegetable growers across the United States. However, the intensive production typical of these systems presents soil health challenges, including salinization due to high fertilizer or compost inputs coupled with lack of rainfall to leach salts. Legume cover crops may improve soil health in high tunnels by reducing the need for external inputs, while adding organic matter. We tested the soil health effects of a winter hairy vetch (Vicia villosa Roth) cover crop used to replace fertilizer N in an organic tomato cropping system in high tunnels. Studies were replicated across three sites differing in climate and soil type (Kansas, Kentucky, and Minne
... Show MoreThis work analyzes the effectiveness of an artificial intelligence (AI) community- building workshop designed for high school teachers and it focuses on contemporary issues related to AI concepts and applications. A group of high school teachers from local education districts attended a one-day AI hands-on workshop at our university. The workshop included several AI-related topics and hands-on examples and exercises aiming to introduce AI concepts and tools relevant to pre-college education. The participating teachers were expected to become a part of a collaborative network created to design, develop, and implement novel AI learning modules for high school students. Initial and a post-training surveys have been used to measure the
... Show MoreThe high mobility group A1 gene (HMGA1) rs139876191 variant has been related to metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes, but data are lacking in Middle Eastern populations. The study aimed to assess whether the HMGA1 rs139876191 variant is associated with metabolic syndrome risk and whether this variant predicts the risk of insulin resistance. This case-control study was carried out at single center in Kirkuk city/ Iraq from February to August 2022. Polymorphisms in HMGA1 and genotyping were identified by Sanger sequencing of genomic DNA obtained from 91 Iraqi participants (61 patients with metabolic syndrome and 30 control). Lipid profile, serum (glucose and insulin), glycated hemoglobin, blood pressure, body mass index, and waist circumfer
... Show MoreThe modern teaching methods, and their importance in achieving the desired learning goals for the individual and the society, have been addressed, as it is necessary to develop the methods, ways and strategies used in the process of teaching the intermediate stages in the various fields in general and the field of physical education in particular, the importance of research is the effect of using the strategy of similarities in teaching some basic skills of basketball for students of the second intermediate. As for the problem of research, the researcher mentioned the lack of use of teachers’ strategy method similarities in the educational units because of its importance, and after study and analysis the researcher found it necessary to i
... Show More: Sound forecasts are essential elements of planning, especially for dealing with seasonality, sudden changes in demand levels, strikes, large fluctuations in the economy, and price-cutting manoeuvres for competition. Forecasting can help decision maker to manage these problems by identifying which technologies are appropriate for their needs. The proposal forecasting model is utilized to extract the trend and cyclical component individually through developing the Hodrick–Prescott filter technique. Then, the fit models of these two real components are estimated to predict the future behaviour of electricity peak load. Accordingly, the optimal model obtained to fit the periodic component is estimated using spectrum analysis and Fourier mod
... Show MoreOver the past few years, ear biometrics has attracted a lot of attention. It is a trusted biometric for the identification and recognition of humans due to its consistent shape and rich texture variation. The ear presents an attractive solution since it is visible, ear images are easily captured, and the ear structure remains relatively stable over time. In this paper, a comprehensive review of prior research was conducted to establish the efficacy of utilizing ear features for individual identification through the employment of both manually-crafted features and deep-learning approaches. The objective of this model is to present the accuracy rate of person identification systems based on either manually-crafted features such as D
... Show MoreImage Fusion Using A Convolutional Neural Network