ROOTING OF DATE PALM (PHOENIX DACTYLIFERA L.) OFFSHOOTS BY ISOPROTHIOLANE (IPT)

The experiment was conducted at Alhassa Oasis (25° 22′ N' latitude; 49°34′ E longitude) and altitude is 179 m a.s.l , Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Treatments included the following Isoprothiolane (IPT) concentrations incorporated at the bottom of offshoot hole: control (without IPT), 25g, 50g, 75g, 100g, 200g and 500g / offshoot hole. The offshoots weight ranged between 25 – 30 kg. The IPT concentrations of 75 and 100 g/ offshoot hole seemed to be quite optimal for improving rooting of date palm offshoots. The best rooting percentage, length of root, root fresh and dry weights were obtained under 75 and 100 g/ offshoot whole IPT concentrations. Offshoots under the control and the lowest and highest IPT treatments reflected poor rooting ability. The chlorophyll content data although looked relatively similar between treatments, a slight edge of 75 and 100 g/ offshoot hole was noticeable. This relative edge might have played a significant role in the photosynthetic ability of offshoots. The efficiency of rooting of offshoots under both concentrations might have resulted from their edged photosynthetic ability

ROOTING OF DATE PALM (PHOENIX DACTYLIFERA L.) OFFSHOOTS BY ISOPROTHIOLANE (IPT)

The experiment was conducted at Alhassa Oasis (25° 22′ N' latitude; 49°34′ E longitude) and altitude is 179 m a.s.l , Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Treatments included the following Isoprothiolane (IPT) concentrations incorporated at the bottom of offshoot hole: control (without IPT), 25g, 50g, 75g, 100g, 200g and 500g / offshoot hole. The offshoots weight ranged between 25 – 30 kg. The IPT concentrations of 75 and 100 g/ offshoot hole seemed to be quite optimal for improving rooting of date palm offshoots. The best rooting percentage, length of root, root fresh and dry weights were obtained under 75 and 100 g/ offshoot whole IPT concentrations. Offshoots under the control and the lowest and highest IPT treatments reflected poor rooting ability. The chlorophyll content data although looked relatively similar between treatments, a slight edge of 75 and 100 g/ offshoot hole was noticeable. This relative edge might have played a significant role in the photosynthetic ability of offshoots. The efficiency of rooting of offshoots under both concentrations might have resulted from their edged photosynthetic ability

Comparison of the technical performance of a discretely supported slab track system and an embedded slab track system in a high-speed railway

Slab tracks are increasingly used for High-Speed Railways (HSR) as opposed to the conventional ballasted track. This is due to many factors, including increased durability and sustainability, as the slab track can sustain higher dynamic loading with less maintenance and disruption to railway services. In line with this, this paper reports on preliminary work on the development and application of a 3D structural model using the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software ABAQUS. The research aims at evaluating comparatively the behaviour of two types of slab track systems; namely, the RHEDA Track System (RTS), which is a German system, and the Balfour Beatty (UK) Embedded Rail System (ERS). The modelled track structures consist of a rail fastened onto a slab laid on a suitable foundation. The foundation comprises a Hydraulically Bound Layer (HBL) placed on a Frost Protection Layer (FPL) overlaying the subgrade soil. The paper reports on findings of static loading on a straight railway section investigating the relationship between slab the thickness values and the corresponding displacements (deflections) and related stresses along the load path. Ongoing research is further developing the model to assess the dynamic behaviour of HSR slab track including the railway geometry-structure interaction particularly at bends

Review of Intellectual Capital Components Research

The success of the organizations in a competitive business environment is depending on the intellectual capital, which is considered as strategic assets for sustainability of the organization. In the knowledge-based economy, modern and high tech organizations not only concentrate on innovation, services, marketing, research and development, instead pay particular attention to the organization intellectual capital. The aim of this paper is to investigate theoretically and empirically contributions in the subject of intellectual capital in an endeavor to recognize the components of intellectual capital. However, to achieve the objective of this paper a comprehensive related literature review was performed. The related literature showed that there are nine dimensions of intellectual capital that have been identified

Educational problems facing teachers of Islamic Education at the primary stage and methods of treatment: a qualitative study. المشكلات التعليمية التي تواجه معلمي التربية الإسلامية بالمرحلة الابتدائية وطرق علاجها: دراسة كيفية

The current study aims at identifying the educational problems facing Islamic Education teachers and methods of treating them at the primary stage in Al-Ahsa Governorate. To answer the study questions, the researcher used the qualitative approach and the semi-structured interview as a study instrument. The tool was applied to a sample of (20) teachers. The results of the study showed that the sources of educational problems facing teachers came in the following order: educational problems related to the school environment, educational problems related to the curriculum, educational problems related to the community environment, educational problems related to students, educational problems related to educational supervisors. The results pointed out that the most important educational problems facing teachers are: the poor quality of school facilities which support the educational process, and the poor family communication with the school. The results also revealed the importance of creating a sound and supportive educational environment as well as reducing the number of students in the classroom

Context-Free Path Queries on RDF Graphs

Navigational graph queries are an important class of queries that canextract implicit binary relations over the nodes of input graphs. Most of the navigational query languages used in the RDF community, e.g. property paths in W3C SPARQL 1.1 and nested regular expressions in nSPARQL, are based on the regular expressions. It is known that regular expressions have limited expressivity; for instance, some natural queries, like same generation-queries, are not expressible with regular expressions. To overcome this limitation, in this paper, we present cfSPARQL, an extension of SPARQL query language equipped with context-free grammars. The cfSPARQL language is strictly more expressive than property paths and nested expressions. The additional expressivity can be used for modelling graph similarities, graph summarization and ontology alignment. Despite the increasing expressivity, we show that cfSPARQL still enjoys a low computational complexity and can be evaluated efficiently.Comment: 25 page

Protein contact map prediction using multi-stage hybrid intelligence inference systems

AbstractProteins are one of the most important molecules in organisms. Protein function can be inferred from its 3D structure. The gap between the number of discovered protein sequences and the number of structures determined by the experimental methods is increasing. Accurate prediction of protein contact map is an important step toward the reconstruction of the protein’s 3D structure. In spite of continuous progress in developing contact map predictors, highly accurate prediction is still unresolved problem. In this paper, we introduce a new predictor, JUSTcon, which consists of multiple parallel stages that are based on adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference System (ANFIS) and K nearest neighbors (KNNs) classifier. A smart filtering operation is performed on the final outputs to ensure normal connectivity behaviors of amino acids pairs. The window size of the filter is selected by a simple expert system. The dataset was divided into testing dataset of 50 proteins and training dataset of 450 proteins. The system produced an average accuracy of 45.2% for the sequence separation of six amino acids. In addition, JUSTcon outperformed SVMcon and PROFcon predictors in the cases of large separation distances. JUSTcon produced an average accuracy of 15% for the sequence separation of 24 amino acids after applying it on CASP9 targets

Huge biloma after endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography and endoscopic biliary sphincterotomy

AbstractBackgroundBiliary leak can occur as a complication of biliary surgery, endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography manipulations and endoscopic biliary sphincterotomy. Consequently, bile may collect in the abdominal cavity, a condition called biloma. Rarely, it may reach a massive size.Case presentationA 72-year-old man presented with gastric upset with gradual abdominal distension reaching a large size due to intra-abdominal bile collection (biloma) after endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography plus endoscopic biliary sphincterotomy and stenting for post laparoscopic cholecystectomy common bile duct stricture. This huge biloma was treated by percutaneous insertion of a tube drain for a few days, evacuating the collection successfully without recurrence.DiscussionThis patient might sustain injury to the common bile duct either by the guide wire or stent, or the injury occurred at the angle between the common bile duct and duodenum during sphincterotomy of the ampulla. Although any of these rents may lead to a bile leak, causing a huge biloma, they could be successfully treated by percutaneous drainage.Conclusions(1) Following endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography, a patient’s complaints should not be ignored. (2) A massive biloma can occur due to such procedures. (3) Conservative treatment with minimal invasive technique can prove to be effective