An assessment of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes under saline and waterlogged compacted soil conditions, II: leaf ion concentrations

A pot experiment was conducted to study effects of salinity and waterlogging under soil compaction conditions on grain yield and yield components of wheat. Treatments were arranged in a factorial layout assigned to a randomized complete design with three replications. Treatment combinations included: two sets of compaction levels, i.e. non-compacted and compacted soil; four abiotic stresses, i.e. non-saline aerobic (untreated silt loam texture soil having ECe = 3 dS m-1); saline × aerobic (S) (ECe 15 dS m-1); saline × waterlogged (S×W); and waterlogged alone (W) were applied; and two Iranian wheat genotypes i.e. Kouhdasht and Tajan. Compaction was achieved by dropping a 5 kg weight, 20 times from 70 cm height on a wooden block placed on top of soil-filled pots. In non-waterlogged treatments, soil water was maintained at 70% of available water holding capacity (AWHC). Waterlogging was achieved by maintaining water up to 110% of the soil’s AWHC for 25 days during tillering stage. S×W caused significantly higher reduction in K+ concentration for both genotypes than other treatments. S×W also resulted in higher leaf Na+ and Cl- concentrations in comparison to other treatments. Kouhdasht maintained significantly higher K + concentration and K+: Na+ ratio at S and S×W treatments than that Tajan (under both non-compacted and compacted soil conditions)

An assessment of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes under saline and waterlogged compacted soil conditions, I: grain yield and yield components

A pot experiment was conducted to study effects of salinity and waterlogging under soil compaction conditions on grain yield and yield components of wheat. Treatments were arranged in a factorial layout assigned to a randomized complete design with three replications. Treatment combinations included: two sets of compaction levels, i.e. non-compacted and compacted soil; four abiotic stresses, i.e. non-saline aerobic (untreated silt loam texture soil having ECe = 3 dS m-1); saline × aerobic (S) (ECe 15 dS m-1); saline × waterlogged (S×W); and waterlogged alone (W) were applied; and two Iranian wheat genotypes i.e. Kouhdasht and Tajan. Compaction was achieved by dropping a 5 kg weight, 20 times from 70 cm height on a wooden block placed on top of soil-filled pots. In non-waterlogged treatments, soil water was maintained at 70% of available water holding capacity (AWHC). Waterlogging was achieved by maintaining water up to 110% of the soil’s AWHC for 25 days during tillering stage. Compaction significantly intensified effect of all other treatments, except waterlogging, on grain yield and yield components of wheat genotypes as compared to control. S×W caused significantly higher reduction in grain yield and yield components for both genotypes than other treatments

Towards a Measure of Trustworthiness to Evaluate CNNs During Operation

Due to black box nature of Convolutional neural networks (CNNs), the continuous validation of CNN classifiers' during operation is infeasible. As a result this makes it difficult for developers or regulators to gain confidence in the deployment of autonomous systems employing CNNs. We introduce the trustworthiness in classification score (TCS), a metric to assist with overcoming this challenge. The metric quantifies the trustworthiness in a prediction by checking for the existence of certain features in the predictions made by the CNN. A case study on persons detection is used to to demonstrate our method and the usage of TCS

Streaming multimedia over WMSNs: an online multipath routing protocol

Routing is a challenge to Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) for supporting multimedia applications due to nodes' energy constraints and computational capabilities, and the ways sensor nodes obtain forwarding information. In this paper, we propose an online multipath routing protocol that uses nodes' positions to make forwarding decisions at each hop. Real-time decisions are made without any need to have the entire network topology knowledge. The protocol achieves load-balancing and minimises nodes' energy consumption by utilizing: (a) smart greedy forwarding scheme for selecting next hop, and (b) walking back forwarding scheme to bypass network holes. Performance comparisons of the proposed protocol (schemes) are made with TPGF and GPSR. The results show that our schemes: (a) maximise the overall network lifespan by not draining energy from some specific nodes, (b) provide QoS delivery for video streams by using best nodes along the route, and (c) scale better in high density WMSN

Effectiveness of Care for Child Development Program on the Sensitivity and Responsiveness Skills of Mothers

Abstract Objectives The Present study aimed to analyze the Impact of “Care for Child Development" program on the sensitivity and responsiveness skills of mothers of children who are at risk of developmental delay. Materials & Methods  This study is a quasi-experimental research planned in pretest-posttest with experimental and control groups. The statistical population included all mothers with children at risk of developmental delay in Tabriz. 50 mothers were selected through purposive sampling. Then, they were randomly divided into two groups of 25 (one experimental group and one control group). The experimental group received training about the program of “Care for child Development “ in 4 group session, while the control group did not receive the same training . The social-emotional assessment/evaluation measure family profile (SEAM TM  family profile)  and maternal caregiving quality scale were the research measurement tools. The obtained data were evaluated by analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and independent t-test using SPSS software version 20. Results There was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in maternal caregiving quality and responsiveness, provision of appropriate activities, predictable programs, and provision of play environment and safe home (P <0.05). Conclusions  The results showed that the ‘care for child development’ program has positive effect on sensitivity and responsiveness skills of mothers of at risk children and could be considered and applied as a practical plan in national health policies

DIRA: Dynamic Domain Incremental Regularised Adaptation

Autonomous systems (AS) often use Deep Neural Network (DNN) classifiers to allow them to operate in complex, high-dimensional, non-linear, and dynamically changing environments. Due to the complexity of these environments, DNN classifiers may output misclassifications during operation when they face domains not identified during development. Removing a system from operation for retraining becomes impractical as the number of such AS increases. To increase AS reliability and overcome this limitation, DNN classifiers need to have the ability to adapt during operation when faced with different operational domains using a few samples (e.g. 100 samples). However, retraining DNNs on a few samples is known to cause catastrophic forgetting. In this paper, we introduce Dynamic Incremental Regularised Adaptation (DIRA), a framework for operational domain adaption of DNN classifiers using regularisation techniques to overcome catastrophic forgetting and achieve adaptation when retraining using a few samples of the target domain. Our approach shows improvements on different image classification benchmarks aimed at evaluating robustness to distribution shifts (e.g.CIFAR-10C/100C, ImageNet-C), and produces state-of-the-art performance in comparison with other frameworks from the literature

An exploratory study to identify critical factors of innovation culture in organizations

During the past two decades, there has been a growing trend on knowledge-based organizations. Innovation, on the other hand, plays essential role on building competitive business units. In this paper, we present an exploratory study to identify critical factors of innovation culture in organizations. We detect important factors influencing innovation culture in construction industry based on the implementation of factor analysis. The proposed study designs a questionnaire and distributes it among 400 experts who are involved in construction industry. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.779, which validates the overall questionnaire. The results of factor analysis have indicated that six factors of building cultural infrastructures, education, organizational vision, established culture, strategic culture and flexible culture are the most important items influencing innovation culture

DOES SUPPLIER’S WILLINGNESS TO CUSTOMIZE INFLUENCE THE BUYER’S RETENTION?

Since the last decade, customer retention has become the central topic in the management and marketing decisions in many companies.  A 5% increase in customer retention can lead to 25-95 % increase in profits. A retained customer is the loyal one to the companies due to the attachment and commitment. This loyal customer will, recommend other customers to purchase and repurchase the companies’ products and services. How we can enhance customer retention? This is one of the main challenges for most of professionals, which requires a lot of investigations. Therefore, the antecedents of customer retention required enough attention. This study explores literatures on antecedents of customer retention in Business-to-Business relationship. Based on the thorough literatures done, a theoretical framework is proposed and some possible recommendations are put forward for future researches. Keywords: Customer retention; Supplier’s willingness to customize; Supplier-buye