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 Minnesota) over three years. We measured vetch cover crop effects on a suite of soil health indicators, including potentially mineralizable nitrogen (PMN), permanganate oxidizable carbon, and microbial biomass. Preliminary results suggest that vetch effects on PMN were highly variable. Soil mineral N, meanwhile, was often lower in the vetch treatment than in a fertilized control, both in spring and in fall. While further work on vetch effects on crop yields is needed, our results suggest that even legume cover crops such as vetch have the potential to reduce nitrate leaching.
Experimental research was carried out to investigate the performance of CFRP wrapping jackets used for retrofitting twelve square reinforced concrete (CR) column specimens damaged by exposure to fire flame, at different temperatures of 300, 500 and 700ºC, except for two specimens that were not burned. The specimens were then loaded axially till failure after gradual or sudden cooling. The specimens were divided into two groups containing two main reinforcement ratios, ρ= 0.0314 and ρ= 0.0542. This was followed by the retrofitting procedure that included wrapping all the specimens with two layers of CFRP fabric sheets. The test results of the retrofitted specimens showed that the fire damaged RC
... Show MoreABSTRACT: In this research SnO2 thin films have been prepared by using hot plate atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition (HPCVD) on glass and Si (n-type) substrates at various temperatures. Optical properties have been measured by UV-VIS spectrophotometer, maximum transmittance about (94%) at 400 0C. Structure properties have been studied by using X-ray diffraction (XRD) , its shows that all films have a crystalline structure in nature and by increasing growth temperature from(350-500) 0C diffraction peaks becomes sharper and grain size has been change. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) uses to analyze the morphology of the Tine Oxides surface structure. Roughness & Root mean square for different temperature have been investigated. The r
... Show MoreAs a reservoir is depleted due to production, pore pressure decreases leading to increased effective stress which causes a reduction in permeability, porosity, and possible pore collapse or compaction. Permeability is a key factor in tight reservoir development; therefore, understanding the loss of permeability in these reservoirs due to depletion is vital for effective reservoir management. The paper presents a case history on a tight carbonate reservoir in Iraq which demonstrates the behavior of rock permeability and porosity as a function of increasing effective stress simulating a depleting mode over given production time. The experimental results show unique models for the decline of permeability and porosity as function effective str
... Show Moremajor goal of the next-generation wireless communication systems is the development of a reliable high-speed wireless communication system that supports high user mobility. They must focus on increasing the link throughput and the network capacity. In this paper a novel, spectral efficient system is proposed for generating and transmitting twodimensional (2-D) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols through 2- D inter-symbol interference (ISI) channel. Instead of conventional data mapping techniques, discrete finite Radon transform (FRAT) is used as a data mapping technique due to the increased orthogonality offered. As a result, the proposed structure gives a significant improvement in bit error rate (BER) performance. Th
... Show MoreIn this work, porous silicon (PS) are fabricated using electrochemical etching (ECE) process for p-type crystalline silicon (c-Si) wafers of (100) orientation. The structural, morphological and electrical properties of PS synthesized at etching current density of (10, 20, 30) mA/cm2 at constant etching time 10 min are studied. From X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement, the value of FWHM is in general decreases with increasing current density for p-type porous silicon (p-PS). Atomic force microscope (AFM) showed that for p-PS the average pore diameter decreases at 20 mA. Porous silicon which formed on silicon will be a junction so I-V characteristics have been studied in the dark to calculate ideality factor (n), and saturation current (Is
... Show MoreIn this study, we introduce new a nanocomposite of functionalize graphene oxide FGO and functionalize multi wall carbon nanotube (F-MWCNT-FGO).The formation of nanocomposite was confirmed by FT-IR ,XRD and SEM. The magnitude of the dielectric permittivity of the (F-MWCNT-FGO) nanocomposite appears to be very high in the low frequency range and show a unique negative permittivity at frequencies range from 400 Hz to 4000Hz. The ac conductivity of nanocomposite reaches 23.8 S.m-1 at 100Hz.