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.
Thermomechanical analysis (TMA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) are used to investigate the effect of molding and annealing of polyester on the behavior of thermal expansion and crystallization since these factors play role in the reprocessing or recycling of the polymer. The dynamic mode of the TMA provides enhanced characterization information about the polyester since it separates the transitions into reversible and irreversible signals, and also reveals the progress of the amorphous regions as the polyester loses strength with the increasing temperature approaching melting. Slow cooling after annealing brings crystallization that may be attributed to molecular chain straightening due to orientation.
One of the unique properties of laser heating applications is its powerful ability for precise pouring of energy on the needed regions in heat treatment applications. The rapid rise in temperature at the irradiated region produces a high temperature gradient, which contributes in phase metallurgical changes, inside the volume of the irradiated material. This article presents a comprehensive numerical work for a model based on experimentally laser heated AISI 1110 steel samples. The numerical investigation is based on the finite element method (FEM) taking in consideration the temperature dependent material properties to predict the temperature distribution within the irradiated material volume. The finite element analysis (FEA) was carried
... Show MoreIn this paper, we present multiple bit error correction coding scheme based on extended Hamming product code combined with type II HARQ using shared resources for on chip interconnect. The shared resources reduce the hardware complexity of the encoder and decoder compared to the existing three stages iterative decoding method for on chip interconnects. The proposed method of decoding achieves 20% and 28% reduction in area and power consumption respectively, with only small increase in decoder delay compared to the existing three stage iterative decoding scheme for multiple bit error correction. The proposed code also achieves excellent improvement in residual flit error rate and up to 58% of total power consumption compared to the other err
... Show MoreThis study deals with free convection heat transfer for the outer surface of two
cylinders of the shape of (Triangular & Rectangular fined cylinders with 8-fins),
putted into two different spaces; small one with dimension of (Length=1.2m,
height=1m, width=0.9m) and large one with dimension of (Length=3.6m, height =3m,
width=2.7m). The experimental work was conducted with air as a heat transport
medium. These cylinders were fixed at different slope angles (0o, 30o, 60o and 90o)
.The heat fluxes were (279, 1012, 1958, 3005, 4419) W/m2, where heat transferred by
convection and radiation. In large space, the results show that the heat transfer from
the triangular finned cylinder is maximum at a slope angle equals
This paper proposes an on-line adaptive digital Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) control algorithm based on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) Model. This research aims to design and implement Neural Network like a digital PID using FPGA in order to generate the best value of the hydrogen partial pressure action (PH2) to control the stack terminal output voltage of the (PEMFC) model during a variable load current applied. The on-line Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is used for finding and tuning the optimal value of the digital PID-NN controller (kp, ki, and kd) parameters that improve the dynamic behavior of the closed-loop digital control fue
... Show MoreWhen optimizing the performance of neural network-based chatbots, determining the optimizer is one of the most important aspects. Optimizers primarily control the adjustment of model parameters such as weight and bias to minimize a loss function during training. Adaptive optimizers such as ADAM have become a standard choice and are widely used for their invariant parameter updates' magnitudes concerning gradient scale variations, but often pose generalization problems. Alternatively, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) with Momentum and the extension of ADAM, the ADAMW, offers several advantages. This study aims to compare and examine the effects of these optimizers on the chatbot CST dataset. The effectiveness of each optimizer is evaluat
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