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.
Mercury is a heavy metal that is extremely toxic. There are three types of it: inorganic, organic, and elemental. Mercury in all its forms has been shown to have harmful effects on living things. It can multiply its concentration from lower to higher trophic levels and accumulate in the body's various tissues. Aquatic organisms bodies have been exposed to mercury mostly through various human activities. The largest source of mercury pollution in the air is thermal power plants that mostly use coal as fuel. It is carried to a body of water after being deposited on the ground surface from the air. The way it enters the food chain is through aquatic plants and animals. Mercury accumulations in the kidney, liver, gills, or gonadal tissues of sp
... Show MoreMaintaining and breeding fish in a pond are a crucial task for a large fish breeder. The main issues for fish breeders are pond management such as the production of food for fishes and to maintain the pond water quality. The dynamic or technological system for breeders has been invented and becomes important to get maximum profit return for aquaponic breeders in maintaining fishes. This research presents a developed prototype of a dynamic fish feeder based on fish existence. The dynamic fish feeder is programmed to feed where sensors detected the fish's existence. A microcontroller board NodeMCU ESP8266 is programmed for the developed h
... Show MoreThis study was aimed to isolate and identify Saccharomyces boulardii from Mangosteen fruits (Garcinia mangostana L.) by traditional and molecular identification methods To get safe and healthy foods probiotics for use, The isolates and two commercial strains were subjected to cultural, morphological and biochemical tests, The colonies of the isolates were spherical, smooth, mucoidal, dull and white to cream colour on SD agar media .The shape of cells was globose to ovoid and sometimes with budding, in a single form or clustered like a beehive. The isolates and two commercial strains were unable to metabolized galactose and lactose , Results shows that all isolates were unable to utilize potassium nitrate and not grow in the presence of (
... Show MoreThe current study aims to compare between the assessments of the Rush model’s parameters to the missing and completed data in various ways of processing the missing data. To achieve the aim of the present study, the researcher followed the following steps: preparing Philip Carter test for the spatial capacity which consists of (20) items on a group of (250) sixth scientific stage students in the directorates of Baghdad Education at Al–Rusafa (1st, 2nd and 3rd) for the academic year (2018-2019). Then, the researcher relied on a single-parameter model to analyze the data. The researcher used Bilog-mg3 model to check the hypotheses, data and match them with the model. In addition
... Show MoreTeachers' self-efficacy plays a very important role in the process of teaching English language, and teachers have primary role in determining what is needed or what would work best with their students. The sample consists of eighty-seven English language teachers in secondary schools in Baghdad/Kaarkh2. Self-efficacy questionnaire of fifteen items was constructed. Face, content validity and reliability were verified. Then, pupils' marks for the first semester were taken as their achievement.The main finding of the study indicates that:
English language teachers' self-efficacy has effect on their pupils' achievement.
In the light of the findings of the present study, several conclusions, recommendations and suggestions for further
This paper investigated the fatigue life behavior of two composite materials subjected to different times of shot peening (2, 4 and 6 min).The first material prepared from unsaturated polyester with E-glass reinforcement by 33% volume fraction. While, the second one was prepared from unsaturated polyester with aluminum powder by2.5% volume fraction. The experimental results showed that the improvement in endurance limit was obtained (for the first material) at 2, 4 and 6 min shot peening times where the percentage of maximum improvement was 25% at shot peening time of 6 min. While, the endurance limit of the second material decreased at shot peening times of 2, 4 and 6 min where the percentage of maximum reduction was 29 % at shot peenin
... Show MoreError control schemes became a necessity in network-on-chip (NoC) to improve reliability as the on-chip interconnect errors increase with the continuous shrinking of geometry. Accordingly, many researchers are trying to present multi-bit error correction coding schemes that perform a high error correction capability with the simplest design possible to minimize area and power consumption. A recent work, Multi-bit Error Correcting Coding with Reduced Link Bandwidth (MECCRLB), showed a huge reduction in area and power consumption compared to a well-known scheme, namely, Hamming product code (HPC) with Type-II HARQ. Moreover, the authors showed that the proposed scheme can correct 11 random errors which is considered a high
... Show MoreExpanded use of antibiotics may increase the ability of pathogenic bacteria to develop antimicrobial resistance. Greater attention must be paid to applying more sustainable techniques for treating wastewater contaminated with antibiotics. Semiconductor photocatalytic processes have proven to be the most effective methods for the degradation of antibiotics. Thus, constructing durable and highly active photocatalytic hybrid materials for the photodegradation of antibiotic pollutants is challenging. Herein, FeTiO3/Fe-doped g-C3N4 (FTO/FCN) heterojunctions were designed with different FTO to FCN ratios by matching the energy level of semiconductors, thereby developing effective direct Z-type heterojunctions. The photodegradation behaviors of th
... Show MoreA new series of Sulfamethoxazole derivatives was prepared and examined for antifibrinolytic and antimicrobial activities. Sulfamethoxazole derivatives bear heterocyclic moieties such as 1,3,4-thiadiazine {3}, pyrazolidine-3,5-diol {4} 6-hydroxy-1,3,4-thiadiazinane-2-thione {5} and [(3-methyl-5-oxo-4,5-dihydro-1H-pyrazol-4-yl)diazenyl] {8}. Their structures were elucidated by spectral methods (FT-IR, H1-NMR). Physical properties are also determined for all compound derivatives. Recently prepared compounds were tested for their antimicrobial activity in the laboratory. Each screened compound showed good tendency to moderate antimicrobial activity.
The present work reports on the performance of three types of nanofiltration membranes in the removal of highly polluting and toxic lead (Pb2+) and cadmium (Cd2+) from single and binary salt aqueous solutions simulating real wastewaters. The effect of the operating variables (pH (5.5-6.5), types of NF membrane and initial ions concentration (10-250 ppm)) on the separation process and water flux was investigated. It was observed that the rejection efficiency increased with increasing pH of solution and decreasing the initial metal ions concentrations. While the flux decreased with increasing pH of solution and increasing initial metal ions concentrations. The maximum rejection of lead and cadmium ion
... Show More