Cover crops (CC) improve soil quality, including soil microbial enzymatic activities and soil chemical parameters. Scientific studies conducted in research centers have shown positive effects of CC on soil enzymatic activities; however, studies conducted in farmer fields are lacking in the literature. The objective of this study was to quantify CC effects on soil microbial enzymatic activities (β-glucosidase, β-glucosaminidase, fluorescein diacetate hydrolase, and dehydrogenase) under a corn (Zea mays L.)–soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) rotation. The study was conducted in 2016 and 2018 in Chariton County, Missouri, where CC were first established in 2012. All tested soil enzyme levels were significantly different between 2016 and 2018, irrespective of CC and no cover crop (NCC) treatments. In CC treatment, β-glucosaminidase activity was significantly greater at 0–10 cm depth in 2016 and at 10–20 and 20–30 cm in 2018. In contrast, dehydrogenase activity was significantly greater in NCC in 2018. Soil pH and organic matter (OM) content were found to be significantly greater in CC. Overall, CC have mixed effects on soil enzyme activities and positive effects on soil OM compared to NCC. This study highlights the short-term influence of CC and illustrates the high spatial and temporal variability of soil enzymes under farmer-managed fields.
Recently, the Internet of Things has emerged as an encouraging technology that is scaling up new heights towards the modernization of real word physical objects into smarter devices in several domains. Internet of Things (IoT) based solutions in agriculture drives farming into a smart way through the proliferation of smart devices to enhanced production with minimal human involvement. This paper presents a comprehensive study of the role of IoT in prominent applications of farming, wireless communication protocols, and the role of sensors in precision farming. In this research article, the existing frameworks in IoT-based agriculture systems with relevant technologies are presented. Furthermore, the comparative analysis of the a
... Show MoreThis study focuses on the basics of cultivation and production of the Wheat Crop in
Wasit Province ; in order to reveal the reality of the geographical distribution of its cultivation
and production.
Wheat is the most important field crops cultivated in Wasit province, as it has vast
possibilities for expansion in growing and production, in which agriculture conducted in a
year and left in other , then changing this method would increase cultivated area of it to nearly
doubled, as well as the possibility of increasing average yields in Donam by using improved
seeds, fertilizer, with the availability of water lever machines, especially wheat is grown in
areas of rivers abutment.
The study showed the spread of th
Expansive soils are recognized by their swelling potential upon wetting due to the existence of some clay minerals such as montmorillonite. An effective solution was found to avoid the danger of such soils by using piles. A single pile embedded in an elasto-plastic expansive soil has been analyzed by using one of the available software which is ABAQUS to investigate the effect of applied loads on pile’s top and investigate the effect of swelling soils on load carrying capacity of the pile. The result shows that as the pile is axially loaded at its top, the axial force along the pile gradually changes from (tension) to (compression) and the pile tends to move downward. The applied load needed to initiate pile’s settlement depend
... Show MoreDuring the last few years, the greener additives prepared from bio-raw materials with low-cost and multifunctional applications have attracted considerable attention in the field of lubricant industry. In the present work, copolymers derived from sunflower and linseed oils with decyl methacrylate were synthesized by a thermal method using benzoyl peroxide (BPO) as a radical initiator. Direct polymerization of fatty acid double bonds in the presence of a free radical initiator results in the development of environmentally friendly copolymeric additives (Co-1 and Co-2). Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) and Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (1H-NMR) were used to characterize the resulting copolymers. Thermal decomposition of copolymers was de
... Show MoreThis paper deals with defining Burr-XII, and how to obtain its p.d.f., and CDF, since this distribution is one of failure distribution which is compound distribution from two failure models which are Gamma model and weibull model. Some equipment may have many important parts and the probability distributions representing which may be of different types, so found that Burr by its different compound formulas is the best model to be studied, and estimated its parameter to compute the mean time to failure rate. Here Burr-XII rather than other models is consider because it is used to model a wide variety of phenomena including crop prices, household income, option market price distributions, risk and travel time. It has two shape-parame
... Show MoreThis study is planned with the aim of constructing models that can be used to forecast trip production in the Al-Karada region in Baghdad city incorporating the socioeconomic features, through the use of various statistical approaches to the modeling of trip generation, such as artificial neural network (ANN) and multiple linear regression (MLR). The research region was split into 11 zones to accomplish the study aim. Forms were issued based on the needed sample size of 1,170. Only 1,050 forms with responses were received, giving a response rate of 89.74% for the research region. The collected data were processed using the ANN technique in MATLAB v20. The same database was utilized to
Rheumatoid arthritis and periodontitis use analogous effector destructive procedures, in that the inflammatory cells and pro-inflammatory cytokines that drive chronic bone erosion in RA and chronic periodontal destruction in Periodontitis are alike. Periodontitis (PD) has appeared as a hazard factor in a number of health situations as rheumatoid arthritis (RA). To determine the effect of anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha biological treatment (methotrexate and Enbrel or infliximab) on periodontal status of patients having rheumatoid arthritis with periodontitis in comparison to those having periodontitis without rheumatoid arthritis and control healthy subjects and to determine the serum levels of anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (ACCP) in t
... Show MoreThe effect of water stress induced by using polyethylene glycol (PEG-6000) on germination of seeds and growth of seedlings of Silybum marianum was studied. Two concentrations of PEG were used to get two water stresses (-0.4 & -0.8 bar) as well as the control for comparison. The results showed a significant decrease (P<0.05) in germination ratio compared with the control. The ratio did not slow down to less than 50% which indicates the ability of the seeds to resist water stress to some extent. Also, a significant decrease (P<0.05) in the length of shoot and root was observed compared with the control. This plant showed
... Show MoreThis research was conduct to evaluate the cytotoxic effect of exotoxin A (ETA) produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa on mice in comparison with (phosphate buffer saline (PBS) as a negative control. The effect of the toxin was measured by employing the cytogenetic analysis which included (the mitotic index (MI), chromosomal aberrations (CAs), micronucleus (MN) and sperm abnormalities) parameters. In order to specify the cytotoxic effect of the toxin, three doses of ETA (125, 250 and 500 ng/ml) were used. Results showed that ETA was found to cause a significant decrease in mitotic index (MI) percentage, while significant increase in micronucleus (MN), chromosomal aberrations (CAs) and sperm abnormalities parameters in compression with control wa
... Show MoreIn this work, a chemical optical fiber sensor based on Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) was designed and implemented using plastic optical fiber. The sensor is used for estimating refractive indices and concentrations of various chemical materials (methanol, distilled water, ethanol, kerosene) as well as for evaluating the performance parameters such as sensitivity, signal to noise ratio, resolution and the figure of merit of the fabricated sensor. It was found that the value of the sensitivity of the optical fiber-based SPR sensor, with 40 nm thick and 10 mm long Au metal film of exposed sensing region, was 3μm/RIU, while the SNR was 0.24, the figure of merit was 20, and the resolution was 0.00066. The sort of optical fiber utilized i
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