Recent phosphorus (P) pollution in the United States, mainly in Maine, has raised some severe concerns over the use of P fertilizer application rates in agriculture. Phosphorus is the second most limiting nutrient after nitrogen and has damaging impacts on crop yield if found to be deficient. Therefore, farmers tend to apply more P than is required to satisfy any P loss after its application at planting. Several important questions were raised in this study to improve P efficiency and reduce its pollution. The objective of this study was to find potential reasons for P pollution in water bodies despite a decrease in potato acreage. Historically, the potato was found to be responsible for P water contamination due to its high P sensitivity and low P removal (25–30 kg ha−1) from the soil. Despite University of Maine recommended rate of 56 kg ha−1 P, if soil tests reveal that P is below 50 kg ha−1, growers tend to apply P fertilizer at the rate of 182 kg ha−1 to compensate for any loss. The second key reason for excessive P application is its tendency to get fixed by aluminum (Al) in the soil. Soil sampling data from UMaine Soil Testing Laboratory confirmed that in Maine reactive Al levels have remained high over the last ten years and are increasing further. Likewise, P application to non-responsive sites, soil variability, pH change, and soil testing methods were found to be other possible reasons that might have led to increases in soil P levels resulting in P erosion to water streams.
In this study, the effect of design parameters such as pipe diameter, pipe wall thickness, pipe material and the effect of fluid velocity on the natural frequency of fluid-structure interaction in straight pipe conveying fully developed turbulent flow were investigate numerically,analytically and experimentally. Also the effect of support conditions, simply-simply and clamped-clamped was investigated. Experimentally, pipe vibrations were characterized by accelerometer mounted on the pipe wall. The natural frequencies of vibration were analyzed by using Fast Fourier Transformer (FFT). Five test sections of two different pipe diameters of 76.2
mm and 50.8 mm with two pipe thicknesses of 3.7 mm and 2.4 mm and two pipe materials,stainles
Introduction The Hybrid Gamma Camera (HGC) is being developed to enhance the localisation of radiopharmaceutical uptake in targeted tissues during surgical procedures such as sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy. Purpose To assess the capability of the HGC, a lymph-node-contrast (LNC) phantom was constructed for an evaluative study simulating medical scenarios of varying radioactivity concentration and SLN size. Materials and methods The phantom was constructed using two methyl methacrylate PMMA plates (8 mm thick). The SLNs were simulated by drilling circular wells of diameters ranging between 10 mm and 2.5 mm (16 wells in total) in one plate. These simulated SLNs were placed underneath scattering material with thicknesses ranging between 5 mm
... Show MoreThis study aims to characterize traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) neurophysiologically using an intramuscular fine-wire electromyography (EMG) electrode pair. EMG data were collected from an agonist-antagonist pair of tail muscles of Macaca fasicularis, pre- and post-lesion, and for a treatment and control group. The EMG signals were decomposed into multi-resolution subsets using wavelet transforms (WT), then the relative power (RP) was calculated for each individual reconstructed EMG sub-band. Linear mixed models were developed to test three hypotheses: (i) asymmetrical volitional activity of left and right side tail muscles (ii) the effect of the experimental TSCI on the frequency content of the EMG signal, (iii) and the effect
... Show MoreBackground: The type of dental implant surface is one of many factors that determine the success of implant restoration. This study aimed to study the effect of mixture of nano titanium oxide with nanohydroxyapatite coating of screw shaped CPTi dental implant on bond strength at bone implant interface by torque removal test related to two healing periods (2 and 6 weeks). Materials and methods: Dip coating process was performed to get an even coating layer on CPTi screws. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and microscopical examination were performed on the coating surfaces of the CPTi. The tibia of 10 white New Zealand rabbits was chosen as implantation sites. The tibia of each rabbit received two screws, one was coated with mixture of nanoT
... Show MoreAs a consequence of a terrorist attack, people may experience posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and lack of feeling secure in relationships. This longitudinal study aimed to examine the prevalence of PTSD symptoms over time, the relationship between adult attachment styles and PTSD, as well as their association with degree of exposure, and finally to consider the distribution and the trajectory of attachment styles. The sample consisted of 235 students (M=125, F=110) who were exposed to different levels of trauma intensity in response to a bombing attack. Participants were recruited and assessed approximately 1 month and 5 months after the attack using a battery of questionnaires. Findings revealed, as expected, that 79.5% of the part
... Show MoreIn this study, a proposed process for the utilization of hydrogen sulphide separated with other gases from omani natural gas for the production of sulphuric acid by wet sulphuric acid process (WSA) was studied. The processwas simulated at an acid gas feed flow of 5000 m3/hr using Aspen ONE- V7.1-HYSYS software. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine the optimum conditions for the operation of plant. This included primarily the threepacked bed reactors connected in series for the production of sulphur trioxidewhich represented the bottleneck of the process. The optimum feed temperature and catalyst bed volume for each reactor were estimated and then used in the simulation of the whole process for tw
... Show MoreThe present study aims to assess environmental pollution using the resistivity method and geological logging technique over a municipal dumpsite of Ijagun Ijebu Ode, underlain by the Afowo Formation within the Dahomey Basin southwestern Nigeria. Forty vertical electrical resistivity soundings stations and six 2D electrical resistivity imaging profiles using Schlumberger and Wenner array respectively with maximum spread-length of 40m at each sounding and profile length of 60 m and 120 m and one borehole log were carried out. Three geoelectrical layers were obtained in the control area, their resistivity values with their corresponding depth of sediment materials is 126 Ωm – 724 Ωm at depth range 0.9 m – 1.1 m (topsoil), 6
... Show MoreIn this paper, we investigate the basic characteristics of "magnetron sputtering plasma" using the target V2O5. The "magnetron sputtering plasma" is produced using "radio frequency (RF)" power supply and Argon gas. The intensity of the light emission from atoms and radicals in the plasma measured by using "optical emission spectrophotometer", and the appeared peaks in all patterns match the standard lines from NIST database and employed are to estimate the plasma parameters, of computes electron temperature and the electrons density. The characteristics of V2O5 sputtering plasma at multiple discharge provisos are studied at the "radio frequency" (RF) power ranging from 75 - 150 Wat
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