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.
The effect of air injection angle on the performance of airlift pump used for water pumping has been studied analytically and experimentally. An airlift pump of dimensions 42mm diameter and 2200 mm length with conventional and modified air injection device was considered. A modification on conventional injection device (normal air-jacket type) was carried out by changing injection angle from 90 (for conventional) to 45 and 22.5 (for modified). Continuity and one-dimensional momentum balance for the flow field with basic principle of two-phase flow and expressions of slip ratio and friction factor as function of flow rates were formulated. The analytical and experimental investigations were carried out f
... Show MoreOpenStreetMap (OSM) represents the most common example of online volunteered mapping applications. Most of these platforms are open source spatial data collected by non-experts volunteers using different data collection methods. OSM project aims to provide a free digital map for all the world. The heterogeneity in data collection methods made OSM project databases accuracy is unreliable and must be dealt with caution for any engineering application. This study aims to assess the horizontal positional accuracy of three spatial data sources are OSM road network database, high-resolution Satellite Image (SI), and high-resolution Aerial Photo (AP) of Baghdad city with respect to an analogue formal road network dataset obtain
... Show MoreThe university Service employee is considered one of the categories of public employees, However, The academic and administrative tasks duties that undertakes have made him a special importance and a distinguished legal status, Therefore, we find That the Iraqi legislatures assigned this category a special Law, it is the university Service law No (23) of 2008 as amended who dealt with some aspects related to serving this category, such as duties, right, condition for appointment and award of academic titles, and financial allocation, such as university service allocation, academic title allocations, and some other Provisions leaving other matters to the general service laws and employee discipline, among the matters that the legislator negl
... Show MoreThis research aims to assess the adoption of TQM in the Middle East Bank for Investment, and diagnosis means and techniques of technological innovation that applied in, as well as to determine the nature of the relationship between total quality management practices (operations management, employment relations, customer relations) and technological innovation (the incremental innovation of the service, incremental innovation process, a radical innovation of the service, a radical innovation of the operation), through use the checklists, derived from a study (Kim et al, 2012) the many styles of mathematical and statistical tools was adopted like the percentage, mean, duplicates, as well as the adoption of the Z test th
... Show MoreCar drivers hear many kinds of noise inside their vehicles' cabins, and the most annoying ones are the noise generated by tires, engines, and outside winds. Noise affects the comfort of the passengers inside the cabin, and it’s sad to say that modern cars are noisier in many kinds of noise signals due to using a lot of plastic materials in new budget cars. For expensive and luxury cars, the problem is solved by using better sound insulation materials, but for the budget ones, the approach used here is effective. It is called Active Noise Cancellation and can be done using analog or digital electronics. An operational amplifier and filters are used for the analog one, and in the digital one, signal processor chips are used. In engineeri
... Show MoreIn the presence of deep submicron noise, providing reliable and energy‐efficient network on‐chip operation is becoming a challenging objective. In this study, the authors propose a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ)‐based coding scheme that simultaneously reduces the crosstalk induced bus delay and provides multi‐bit error protection while achieving high‐energy savings. This is achieved by calculating two‐dimensional parities and duplicating all the bits, which provide single error correction and six errors detection. The error correction reduces the performance degradation caused by retransmissions, which when combined with voltage swing reduction, due to its high error detection, high‐energy savings are achieved. The res
... Show MoreThe prevalence of using the applications for the internet of things (IoT) in many human life fields such as economy, social life, and healthcare made IoT devices targets for many cyber-attacks. Besides, the resource limitation of IoT devices such as tiny battery power, small storage capacity, and low calculation speed made its security a big challenge for the researchers. Therefore, in this study, a new technique is proposed called intrusion detection system based on spike neural network and decision tree (IDS-SNNDT). In this method, the DT is used to select the optimal samples that will be hired as input to the SNN, while SNN utilized the non-leaky integrate neurons fire (NLIF) model in order to reduce latency and minimize devices
... Show MoreThe emergence of mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) or nanocomposite membranes embedded with inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) has opened up a possibility for developing different polymeric membranes with improved physicochemical properties, mechanical properties and performance for resolving environmental and energy-effective water purification. This paper presents an overview of the effects of different hydrophilic nanomaterials, including mineral nanomaterials (e.g., silicon dioxide (SiO2) and zeolite), metals oxide (e.g., copper oxide (CuO), zirconium dioxide (ZrO2), zinc oxide (ZnO), antimony tin oxide (ATO), iron (III) oxide (Fe2O3) and tungsten oxide (WOX)), two-dimensional transition (e.g., MXene), metal–organic framework (MOFs), c
... Show MoreIn this research, a study is introduced on the effect of several environmental factors on the performance of an already constructed quality inspection system, which was designed using a transfer learning approach based on convolutional neural networks. The system comprised two sets of layers, transferred layers set from an already trained model (DenseNet121) and a custom classification layers set. It was designed to discriminate between damaged and undamaged helical gears according to the configuration of the gear regardless to its dimensions, and the model showed good performance discriminating between the two products at ideal conditions of high-resolution images. So, this study aimed at testing the system performance at poo
... Show MoreNutrient enrichment of Sawa lake water was made using different nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations during autumn and spring at three stations. Different concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus and N: P ratios were used to test variations in phytoplankton population dynamics. Nitrogen at a concentration of 25 µmole.l-1 and N: P ratio of 10:1 gave highest phytoplankton cell number at all stations and seasons. A total of 64 algal taxa dominated by Bacillariophyceae followed by Cyanophyceae and Chlorophyceae were identified. The values of Shannon index of diversity were more than one in the studied stations.