Productivity of date palm as affected by irrigation in a sandy soil

A field experiment was conducted on drip irrigated date palm trees (Barhi var.) in a private farm during the 2020 and 2021 seasons to evaluate the effect of five irrigation treatments (120, 100, 80, and 60% ETo and farmer practice) on amounts of applied irrigation water (AIW), consumptive use (CU), date yield and its components, fruit quality, water use efficiency (WUE), water productivity (WP), consumed electric energy, net income, a local date crop coefficient (Kc) and yield response factor (Ky). Results revealed that, average ETo values varied between 1.26 mm/day in December and 9.85 mm/day in July. The 2–year average AIW values were 17 377, 14 546, 11 715, 8 885 and 24 680 m3/ha for the 120, 100, 80 and 60% ETo treatments and farmer practice, respectively. Highest and lowest fruit yields of 39.2 and 15.2 t/ha were recorded for the 120% and 60% ETo treatments, respectively. The WP values of the same treatments were 2.27 and 1.23 kg fruits/m3. Seasonal average Kc value of 0.74 is obtained for the 120% ETo treatment. The Ky value of 1.187 is obtained for the Barhi variety. The lowest consumed energy (64.7%) and highest net income (31.8%) were recorded for 60% and 120% ETo treatments compared with farmer practice.  Keywords: Applied water, water consumption, water use efficiency, water productivity, crop coefficient, yield response factor, energy saving, net incom

ICI and PAPR enhancement in MIMO-OFDM system using RNS coding

The Inter-Carrier-Interference (ICI) is considered a bottleneck in the utilization of Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems, due to the sensitivity of the OFDM towards frequency offsets which lead to loss of orthogonality, interference and performance degradation. In this paper Residue Numbers as a coding scheme is impeded in MIMO-OFDM systems, where the ICI levels is measured and evaluated with respect to conventional ICI mitigation techniques implemented in MIMO-OFDM. The Carrier-to-Interference Ratio (CIR), the system Bit-Error-Rate (BER) and the Complementary Cumulative Distribution Function (CCDF) for MIMO-OFDM system with Residue Number System (RNS) coding are analyzed and evaluated. The results had demonstrated a performance of transmission model with and without RNS

Measurement and Instrumentation in Mechatronics Engineering Education

Instrumentation and measurement technology has served as the backbone of modern industry. It is very important that engineering graduate should be equipped with the comprehensive knowledge about instrumentation and measurement techniques. This will help them to cope with various industrial sectors. Industrials are eager to get highly educated engineers who can deal with their equipment easily with no extra training. Since industry is continuously upgrading with new generation equipment, it is essential that engineering students should be trained in all major groups of instrumentation including analog technology, digital technology and computer base instrumental. However, there is no any module or references include this three part. Most references are discussing the instrumentation and measurement technology in general or separately. Consequently, the proposition of work is to come up with a one module which will include all instrumentation and measurement technology syllabus specially designed for engineering student to cover the whole aspects. However, the concentration will be devoted to mechatronics engineering

Analysis of transient multiexponential signals using cepstral deconvolution

We propose and test a new method of multiexponential transient signal analysis. The method based on cepstral deconvolution is fast and computationally inexpensive. The multiexponential signal is initially converted to a deconvolution model using Gardners' transformation after which the proposed method is used to deconvolve the data. Simulation and experimental results indicate that this method is good for determining the number of components but performs poorly in accurately estimating the decay rates. Influence of noise is not considered in this paper

Evolutionary Computation for Static Traffic Light Cycle Optimisation

Cities have become congested with traffic and changes to road network infrastructure are usually not possible. Thus, researchers and practitioners are investigating the practice of traffic light signal optimisation methodologies upon already established road networks to improve the flow of vehicles through the cities. The flow of traffic can be described by multiple factors such as mean journey time, mean waiting time, average vehicle velocity, and time loss. Static timing means that each traffic phase is active for a pre-fixed duration during the cycle. We aim to optimise traffic signal timing plans to minimise the mean journey time, which is increased by improper signalling, for vehicles during their journey across the junctions. In this research, we propose and empirically analyse several automatic intelligent decision support systems including genetic algorithms and selection hyper-heuristic methods for the optimisation of traffic light signalling problem. The empirical results indicate the success of the proposed algorithm techniques

Effect of Progesterone Therapy versus Diet Modification on Constipation during Pregnancy

Background: Pregnant women may experience constipation for the first time or their existing constipation symptoms increase in severity during pregnancy.Aim: To compare the effect of progesterone versus diet modification in the treatment of constipation during pregnancy.Subjects and Methods: Women aged ≥18 years with functional constipation according to the Rome III criteria from obstetrics outpatients’ clinic and midwife practices included in this study. Participants divided into two groups; control group managed with diet modifications and study group pregnant women with threatened miscarriage and advised to take vaginal progesterone ≥1 week. Participants completed a nonvalidated questionnaire created by the authors during the whole week before intake of progesterone or diet modifications and after treatment phase. Independent Student’s t‑test and Chi‑square (X2) test were used for statistical analysis to compare between two studied groups. Primary outcome measures; change in defecation frequency.Results: Sensation of anorectal obstruction and sensation of incomplete evacuation were significantly less in Group B (progesterone therapy) compared to Group A (diet modification) (54% [154/281] and 62.98% [177/281] vs. 89.76% [614/684] and 91.08% [623/684], respectively) (P = 0.04 and 0.03, respectively). Straining during defecation and manual maneuvers to facilitate evacuation were significantly less in Group B compared to Group A (63.7% [179/281] and 19.9% [56/281] vs. 94.59% [647/684] and 86.54% [592/684], respectively) (P < 0.01 and 0.02, respectively). Episodes of abdominal pain and presence of reflux episodes were also significantly less in Group B compared to Group A (18.5% [52/281] and 17.43% [49/281] vs. 84.11% [589/684] and 75% [513/684], respectively) (P = 0.01 and 0.03, respectively). Conclusions: Estrogen, rather than progesterone, may be a detrimental factor of constipation during pregnancy via decreased bowel movement. Progesterone therapy seems to be effective in the treatment of functional constipation during pregnancy. A randomized placebo controlled trial is required to confirm the data of this study.KEY WORDS: Constipation, diet modification, pregnancy, progesteron