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.
Plastic soil exhibits unfavorited geotechnical properties (when saturation), which causes negative defects to engineering structures. Different attempts (included various materials) were conducted to proffer solutions to such defects by experimenting in practical ways. On one hand, these attempts aimed to improve the engineering characteristics of plastic soil, and on the other hand, to use problematic waste materials as a stabilizer, like cement kiln dust, and to reduce environmental hazards. This paper explored the shrinkage, plasticity, and strength behavior of plastic soil enhanced with cement dust. The cement dust contents were 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% by dry weight of soil. An experimental series of shrinkage and p
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This study was focused on biotreatment of soil which polluted by petroleum compounds (Diesel) which caused serious environmental problems. One of the most effective and promising ways to treat diesel-contaminated soil is bioremediation. It is a choice that offers the potential to destroy harmful pollutants using biological activity. Four bacterial strains were isolated from diesel contaminated soil samples. The isolates were identified by the Vitek 2 system, as Sphingomonas paucimobilis, Pentoae species, Staphylococcus aureus, and Enterobacter cloacae. The potential of biological surfactant production was tested using the Sigma 703D stand-alone tensiometer showed that these isolates are biological surfactant producers. The bet
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Solid waste generation and composition in Baghdad is typically affected by population growth, urbanization, improved economic conditions, changes in lifestyles and social and cultural habits.
A burning chamber was installed to burn cellulosic waste only. It was found that combustion reduced the original volume and weight of cellulosic waste by 97.4% and 85% respectively.
A batch composting study was performed to evaluate the feasibility of co-composting organic food waste with the cellulosic bottom ash in three different weight ratios (w/w) [95/5, 75/25, 50/50].
The composters were kept in controlled aerobic conditions for 7 days. Temperature, moisture, and pH were measured hourly as process succe
... Show MoreCollapsible soil has a metastable structure that experiences a large reduction in volume or collapse when wetting. The characteristics of collapsible soil contribute to different problems for infrastructures constructed on its such as cracks and excessive settlement found in buildings, railways channels, bridges, and roads. This paper aims to provide an art review on collapse soil behavior all over the world, type of collapse soil, identification of collapse potential, and factors that affect collapsibility soil. As urban grow in several parts of the world, the collapsible soil will have more get to the water. As a result, there will be an increase in the number of wetting collapse problems, so it's very important to com
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The construction of embankment for roadway interchange system at urban area is restricted due to the large geometry requirements, since the value of land required for such construction is high, and the area available is limited as compared to rural area. One of the optimum solutions to such problem is the earth reinforcement technique which requires a limited area for embankment construction. Gypseous soil from Al-Anbar governorate area was obtained and subjected to various physical and chemical analysis to determine it is properties. A laboratory model box of 50x50x25 cm was used as a representative embankment; soil has been compacted in five layers at maximum dry density (modified compaction) and an aluminum reinforcement strips were i
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Background:Amino acid disorders are a major group of inborn error metabolism (IEM) with variable clinical presentation; its diagnosis constitutes a real challenge in a community with high consanguinity rate and no systematic newborn screening.
Objectives: to provide data about amino acid disorders detected in high-risk Iraqi children by using quantitative amino acid fluorescent high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis.
Type of the study: Cross-sectional study.
Methods: a descriptive cross sectional study from 1st February to 1st December 2014, at Neurological ward and clinic of the Children Welfare teaching Hospital, in Baghdad - Ira
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Abstract
were determine the problem of current research to answer the question on the consciousness of the Ministry of Agriculture to adopt Staffing strategy and identify the shortcomings as the independent variable, represented by the three dimensions (recruitment , selection, placement) and its impact on high performance, as dependent variable is described in four dimensions (leadership, strategy, structure and processes, culture), in this research were Used analytical descriptive style . This research aims to identify the correlation and impact of Staffing strategy at high-performance in Ministry of Agriculture , To clarify the relationship between
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