Soil water use and water storage vary by vegetative management practices, and these practices affect land productivity and hydrologic processes. This study investigated the effects of agroforestry buffers (AB), grass buffers (GB), and biofuel crops (BC), relative to row crops (RC) on soil water use for a claypan soil in northern Missouri, USA. The experiment located at the Greenley Memorial Research Center included RC, AB, GB, and BC established in 1991, 1997, 1997, and 2012, respectively. Soil water reflectometer sensors installed at 5‐, 10‐, 20‐, and 40‐cm depths monitored soil water from April to November in 2017 and 2018. Results showed significant differences in weekly volumetric water content (VWC) among treatments for all four soil depths in 2017 and 2018. Treatments of AB, GB, and BC had lower VWC (16, 37, and 18% on 9 June), (31, 35, and 20% on 18 August), and (43, 49, and 35% on 29 September) in 2017 and (46, 70, and 19% on 24 August) and (31, 34, and 17% on 5 October) in 2018, respectively, in the pre‐recharge periods for the 5‐cm depth compared with the RC. In the post‐recharge period, equal or occasionally slightly higher soil water occurred in the buffer and biofuel treatments compared to the RC. During recharge, larger increases in soil water due to better infiltration were observed in the perennial vegetative practices relative to RC. The results showed that these practices could significantly influence soil water use and storage compared to RC management, especially for eroded claypan landscapes.
Estimation of elements: Pb, Zn, Mn, Cd, and Cu, which were conducted seasonally from October-2021 till March-2022 in residential areas of Baghdad City using Geoaccumulation index (Igeo), enrichment factor ratios (EF), the factor of contamination (CF), contamination degree (Cd), index of pollution load (PLI) and index of potential ecological risk (Eif). The overall contamination factor in the research area is limited from low contamination with Cu, Mn, and Zn, moderately contaminated to very high contamination with Pb and Cd, while the assessment according to the I-geo index shows categories that vary from a slightly polluted to unpolluted by those examined heavy metals. The pollution load index indicates that the soils in some resi
... Show MoreUnder-reamed piles are piles with enlarged bases, which may be single bulb or multi bulbs. Such piles are suitable for resisting considerable soil movement of filed up ground, soft clay, and loose sand and have the advantages of increasing the soil strength and decreasing the displacement. In the present study, the finite element method was used to analyse the performance of a single pile with under-reamed bulbs of different shapes, that is, single cone, double cone, and half and full sphere, embedded in homogeneous, poorly graded sandy soil. The model of under-reamed pile was made of reinforced concrete and the bulb located at the middle of the embedded length of the pile. The dynami
This article presents test results documentation for four grouted ground anchors embedded in sandy soil. Three anchors were trial, while one was a working anchor. One trial anchor is instrumented with eight resistance-type strain gauges glued on the corrugated pipe and embedded within the grouted body. An acceptance test was made for all anchors to determine the working load. Acceptance criteria suggested by the Post-Tensioning Institute were applied, and the working anchor did not pass the creep criterion, so it was taken out of service. The strain measurements indicated that the compression stresses were generated along the free length, while the tension stresses were generated alon
This paper presents an experimental study between uniform pile and different types of under-reamed pile, single bulb. The under-reamed piles are piles with enlarged bases that are suitable to resist considerable movement of the ground, filed up ground, soft clay, and loose sand which have advantages to increase the soil strength, uplift capacity, and decrease the displacement. In the present study, there are experimental analyze to performance the suitable under-reamed type under sinusoidal load from vertical vibration (motor-oscillator was mounted directly on the pile cap. The main finding of this work is that the pile capacity increases with the ream and that all stress values of so
Spinach, Spinacia oleracea L is a popular vegetable belonging to the family Chenopodiaceae. This study was concerned with extraction of compounds in Iraqi spinach leaves, preliminary phytochemical evaluation, identification of two biological important flavonols, quercetin and kaempferol in spinach leaves and evaluation of the protective effect of aqueous spinach extract on methotrexate (MTX) induced hepatotoxicity in rats. The percentage yield of extraction procedure, identification of spinach by chemical tests and identification of flavonols by thin layer chromatography (TLC) and High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) were fully described in this study. The results indicate that the percentage of quarce
... Show MoreHeavy metal (HM) pollution has long been a significant source of environmental deterioration and a problem for the safety of food. Iraqis prefer rice over any other food, and since heavy metals have a direct impact on health, their traces in rice have drawn particular attention. Before cooking rice, it is usual in Iraq to wash and soak it. Some 55 varieties of imported and local rice were sampled from Erbil city markets in 2022 with the aim of determining the concentration of As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb before and after soaking. Standard procedure of acid digestions was applied on the raw and soaked samples. The solutions were analyzed using ICPE-9820 Shimadzu. The mean concentrations of As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb (in mg/kg) in the rice samples bef
... Show MoreIn this work, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were biosynthesized from leaves of Ziziphus mauritiana Lam. jujube plant in Iraq and tested against fungal pathogens. Extract of leaves of Z. mauritiana mixed with 10-3 M AgNO3exposed to slight sunlight for 3 days. Characterization of AgNPs was done using UV-visible spectroscopy, SPM (scanning probe microscopy) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The change of solution color from pale brown to dark brown and the exhibited maximum peak at 445 nm accepted as an indicator to biosynthesized AgNPs. Aqueous extract of Ziziphus mauritiana is considered as biological reduced and stabilized agent for Ag+ to Ag0. AFM showed the formation of irregular shapes of AgNPs. The biosynthesized silver nanoparticles ha
... Show MoreAerial manipulation of objects has a number of advantages as it is not limited by the morphology of the terrain. One of the main problems of the aerial payload process is the lack of real-time prediction of the interaction between the gripper of the aerial robot and the payload. This paper introduces a digital twin (DT) approach based on impedance control of the aerial payload transmission process. The impedance control technique is implemented to develop the target impedance based on emerging the mass of the payload and the model of the gripper fingers. Tracking the position of the interactional point between the fingers of gripper and payload, inside the impedance control, is achieved using model predictive control (MPD) approach.
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