Variation of Faba Beans (Vicia faba L.) Traits Induced By Heat, Electric Shock and Mutagen Nitrous Acid

This research was carried out to determine the impact of heat shock, electric shock and seeds in soaking nitrous acid mutagen solution on three cultivars of faba beans plant (Zaina, Aguadulce and Local) at the year 2012-2013. Factorial experiment was arranged in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replicates were used. The results showed that heat shock lead to early plants of 50% in flowering and an increase in the number of branches/plant and the number of seeds/pod compared to other treatments, whereas the seeds soaked in nitrous acid mutagen solution gave the highest plant height, leaf area index, number of pods/plant, seed weight, seed yield kg/ha, and did not differ significantly with treatment of electric shock in the protein yield(kg/ha). Zaina cultivar was superior over other cultivars in early to 50% flowering, number of branches/plant, number of pods/plant and seed weight, while gave the lowest value in plant height. Significant differences also observed for the interaction between cultivars and treatments. Zaina cultivar with heat shock treatment gave less number of days to 50% flowering, highest number of branches/plant and the number of seeds/pod, either when seeds soaked in nitrous acid mutagen solution given the highest plant height of plant, highest mean of seed weight, seed yield kg/ha and did not differ significantly with local variety in the number of pods/plant trait

The Mirrornet : Learning Audio Synthesizer Controls Inspired by Sensorimotor Interaction

Experiments to understand the sensorimotor neural interactions in the human cortical speech system support the existence of a bidirectional flow of interactions between the auditory and motor regions. Their key function is to enable the brain to `learn' how to control the vocal tract for speech production. This idea is the impetus for the recently proposed "MirrorNet", a constrained autoencoder architecture. In this paper, the MirrorNet is applied to learn, in an unsupervised manner, the controls of a specific audio synthesizer (DIVA) to produce melodies only from their auditory spectrograms. The results demonstrate how the MirrorNet discovers the synthesizer parameters to generate the melodies that closely resemble the original and those of unseen melodies, and even determine the best set parameters to approximate renditions of complex piano melodies generated by a different synthesizer. This generalizability of the MirrorNet illustrates its potential to discover from sensory data the controls of arbitrary motor-plants

Selection of Suitable Sites for Water Harvesting Structures in a Flood Prone Area Using Remote Sensing and GIS – Case Study

Water harvesting structures are extremely important to conserve precious natural resource like soil and water which is deteriorating due to the uncontrolled flood flushes that caused damages, in time where it could be very useful if suitable technical methods were applied to keep it. Check dams are one of these structures that could be very useful if certain conditions were available in the flood area. In this study Ali Al Gharbi which is located in the southeast part of Iraq near to the Iraqi- Iranian borders, is chosen as an area that suffered from frequently flood flushes that come from the Iranian land. Those floods damaged all the infrastructures like bridges, roads and also the farms and villages in its way. Remote sensing and GIS technologies were the appropriate tools to choose the suitable sites for check dams in the area. The various thematic maps such as Land use, Drainage, HSG, Slope and DEM maps were prepared for selecting suitable sites for construction of check dams. Four check dams and four percolation tanks were proposed for the construction that may serve the purpose of soil and water conservation to help in sustainable development of the catchment area. The proposed check dams can be very useful to supply water for irrigation in dry seasons. Keywords: Water harvesting, Check dams, Ali Al Gharbi, Missan Governorate, GIS, Floods, Remote sensing

An Optimum Design of Cam Mechanisms with Roller Follower for Combined Effect of Impact and High Contact Loads

The problem in the design of a cam is the analyzing of the mechanisms and dynamic forces that effect on the family of parametric polynomials for describing the motion curve. In present method, two ways have been taken for optimization of the cam size, first the high dynamic loading (such that impact and elastic stress waves propagation) from marine machine tool which translate by the roller follower to the cam surface and varies with time causes large contact loads and second it must include the factors of kinematics features including the acceleration, velocity, boundary condition and the unsymmetrical curvature of the cam profile for the motion curve.<br /> In the theoretical solution the unidirectional impact stress waves with the Mushkelishvilis inverse of the singular integral equation for contact stress have been used for analytical solution and a numerical solution have bean solved using F.E.M (ANSYS 10) for stress analysis in a cam surface at condition of rise-dwell-return (R-D-R) motion of the follower, also to compare the analytical and numerical results that have been used different pressure angles in the rise and return of the motion curves in unsymmetrical cam profile for optimum design. <br /> <br /

Linking cause assessment, corporate philanthropy, and corporate reputation

This study analyzes the link between cause assessment, corporate philanthropy, and dimensions of corporate reputation from different stakeholders' perspectives, using balance theory as a conceptual framework and the telecommunications industry in Austria and Egypt as the empirical setting. Findings show that corporate philanthropy can improve perceptions of the corporate reputation dimensions, but the results vary between customers and non-customers and depend on the country setting

Study of IL-35 levels in Multiple Myeloma patients and its Relation with Immunoglobulins

Multiple myeloma (MM) is a malignant disorder characterized by the proliferation of plasma cellsand the second most common hematological standing next to lymphoma. Multiple myeloma patients commonly present with defects in numbers and function of various   immune cells including dendritic cells ,B cells,Tcells and natural kill cells[23].Interleukin- 35 (IL-35) is a novel anti-inflammatory cytokine suppressing the immune response through the expansion of regulatory T cells and suppression of Th17 cell development.The present study aimedto investigate the possible role of IL-35 in pathogenesis of MM and its relation withimmunoglobulins such as IgA,IgG and IgM.Forty Iraqis patients with multiple myeloma(G1,G2) and twenty healthy individuals as a control group (G1)were enrolled in this study.Whole blood used for determination of  hemoglobin. Serum samples were used for determination of albumin,total protein using standard procedures of the biochemistry laboratory of hospital. Also immunoglobulin's (IgA,IgG,IgM) and IL-35 were determined in serum.The results revealed a significant increasing in urine total protein ,ESR,creatinine ,uric acid ,BUN, and TP in  patients groups(G2,G3) comparing to control group(G1) while a   significant decrease in albumin and Hb  were found in  patients groups comparing to control .Also a significant differences  was observed in calcium concentration in G3  compared to G2 while there are no differences  was observed between G2 and G1 . The results shown highly significant increase in IgA,IgG, IgM and  IL-35,in  patients groups comparing to control group. Also a significant  differences were noticed in G3 comparing to G2. A highly significant positive correlation between IL-35 and IgA was noted in G2  and G3. Also a highly significant positive correlation between IL-35 and IgG levels was noticed in G2 and G3. Moreover a significant negative correlation founded between IL-35  andIgM in G2  and  G3 .A conclusion could be drown from this study for the first time that MM patients showed increasing in IL-35  levels so, it may be considered as a novel cytokine involved in the pathogenesis of MM. Keyword:IL-35,Multiple Myeloma,Immunoglobulines

Auditory Short-Term Memory Behaves Like Visual Short-Term Memory

Are the information processing steps that support short-term sensory memory common to all the senses? Systematic, psychophysical comparison requires identical experimental paradigms and comparable stimuli, which can be challenging to obtain across modalities. Participants performed a recognition memory task with auditory and visual stimuli that were comparable in complexity and in their neural representations at early stages of cortical processing. The visual stimuli were static and moving Gaussian-windowed, oriented, sinusoidal gratings (Gabor patches); the auditory stimuli were broadband sounds whose frequency content varied sinusoidally over time (moving ripples). Parallel effects on recognition memory were seen for number of items to be remembered, retention interval, and serial position. Further, regardless of modality, predicting an item's recognizability requires taking account of (1) the probe's similarity to the remembered list items (summed similarity), and (2) the similarity between the items in memory (inter-item homogeneity). A model incorporating both these factors gives a good fit to recognition memory data for auditory as well as visual stimuli. In addition, we present the first demonstration of the orthogonality of summed similarity and inter-item homogeneity effects. These data imply that auditory and visual representations undergo very similar transformations while they are encoded and retrieved from memory