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 CR-39 detector technique was used, to estimate the uranium concentration from the soil in midland refineries Company (Doura refine (, Baghdad, Iraq. Uranium concentrations in soil samples have been measured using solid state nuclear track detector type CR-39. Nine soil samples were collected from different areas within the Doura refinery and other soil samples were collected form Abu Tayara Street and ALshortaa District outside the refinery for comparison. The results showed variable values for uranium concentrations. The average value of uranium concentration was found to be 0.37 ppm in doura refinery. For areas outside the refinery, the concentration of uranium was 0.008 ppm. Thes
... Show MoreUnder-reamed piles are piles with enlarged bases, which may be single bulb or multi bulbs. Such piles are suitable for resisting considerable soil movement of filed up ground, soft clay, and loose sand and have the advantages of increasing the soil strength and decreasing the displacement. In the present study, the finite element method was used to analyse the performance of a single pile with under-reamed bulbs of different shapes, that is, single cone, double cone, and half and full sphere, embedded in homogeneous, poorly graded sandy soil. The model of under-reamed pile was made of reinforced concrete and the bulb located at the middle of the embedded length of the pile. The dynami
Harriet Jacobs was a writer and a reformer. As a female writer in the nineteenth century, Jacobs wrote her narrative as a means of resisting the system of slavery. She wrote her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself, (1842) to reflect upon the exploitation of the black people and the need to change the hierarchal attitude that governs white/black relations. She was engaged in many abolitionist events and her anti-slavery approach appeared clearly in her writings. She shares Du Bios ideas about freedom and emancipation and the need for a political and cultural change. Thus, Du Bois’s theory provides a framework for her autobiographical novel where she portrays Linda Brent, the main character, a strong wille
... Show MoreHarriet Jacobs was a writer and a reformer. As a female writer in the nineteenth century, Jacobs wrote her narrative as a means of resisting the system of slavery. She wrote her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself, (1842) to reflect upon the exploitation of the black people and the need to change the hierarchal attitude that governs white/black relations. She was engaged in many abolitionist events and her anti-slavery approach appeared clearly in her writings. She shares Du Bios ideas about freedom and emancipation and the need for a political and cultural change. Thus, Du Bois’s theory provides a framework for her autobiographical novel where she portrays Linda Brent, the main character, a strong w
... Show MoreCorrect grading of apple slices can help ensure quality and improve the marketability of the final product, which can impact the overall development of the apple slice industry post-harvest. The study intends to employ the convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures of ResNet-18 and DenseNet-201 and classical machine learning (ML) classifiers such as Wide Neural Networks (WNN), Naïve Bayes (NB), and two kernels of support vector machines (SVM) to classify apple slices into different hardness classes based on their RGB values. Our research data showed that the DenseNet-201 features classified by the SVM-Cubic kernel had the highest accuracy and lowest standard deviation (SD) among all the methods we tested, at 89.51 % 1.66 %. This
... Show MoreThis research concerns the fact of the school garden and how can we tackle this issue. The research starts with a question forwarded to those who are interested in the ministry of education matters; the question is that how is the extent of interest in the school garden project? And how it is activated in the Iraqi Educational Institution program? In addition, the analysis reveals the importance of the school garden since we, as teachers and students, suffer from seeing the view of the trashes, the wastes of school furniture, the stinking water and the weeds and how it is accumulated in the back yard of the school. To add fuel to the fire, the increase in number of the students; year after year. This increase leads to adding more classes
... Show MoreThe research problem lies in the ambiguity of the usage of propaganda contents by two main media outlets (the Russian RT and American Alhurra) in their news coverage of the Syrian crisis through their websites and the methods used by them to convince users taking into account the mutual propaganda conflict between the United States and Russia in the war against Syria. The objectives of the research can be represented by the following: investigating the contents of American and Russian electronic propaganda towards Syrian crisis.
• Identifying the contents that received most of the coverage in the Syrian crisis by the two news outlets.
• Identifying the terms and phrases that have been most used by the websites of RT and Alhurr
Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) is one of the world’s oldest cultivated fruit crops and belongs to the Arecaceae family. It originated in Mesopotamia (Iraq) in 4000 BC. Large areas of palm groves in Iraq produce various types of dates for internal consumption and export. Their cultivation has spread and has become a significant crop in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, and the Middle East. Date fruits are widely consumed in Iraq, and radiological monitoring of this crop is necessary as activity concentrations of 238U, 232Th, 40K, and 137Cs were measured in 12 soil samples and 12 date samples from
