Predicting and Mapping of Soil Organic Carbon Using Machine Learning Algorithms in Northern Iran

Estimation of the soil organic carbon content is of utmost importance in understanding the chemical, physical, and biological functions of the soil. This study proposes machine learning algorithms of support vector machines, artificial neural networks, regression tree, random forest, extreme gradient boosting, and conventional deep neural network for advancing prediction models of SOC. Models are trained with 1879 composite surface soil samples, and 105 auxiliary data as predictors. The genetic algorithm is used as a feature selection approach to identify effective variables. The results indicate that precipitation is the most important predictor driving 15 percent of SOC spatial variability followed by the normalized difference vegetation index, day temperature index of moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer, multiresolution valley bottom flatness and land use, respectively. Based on 10 fold cross validation, the DNN model reported as a superior algorithm with the lowest prediction error and uncertainty. In terms of accuracy, DNN yielded a mean absolute error of 59 percent, a root mean squared error of 75 percent, a coefficient of determination of 0.65, and Lins concordance correlation coefficient of 0.83. The SOC content was the highest in udic soil moisture regime class with mean values of 4 percent, followed by the aquic and xeric classes, respectively. Soils in dense forestlands had the highest SOC contents, whereas soils of younger geological age and alluvial fans had lower SOC. The proposed DNN is a promising algorithm for handling large numbers of auxiliary data at a province scale, and due to its flexible structure and the ability to extract more information from the auxiliary data surrounding the sampled observations, it had high accuracy for the prediction of the SOC baseline map and minimal uncertainty.Comment: 30pages, 9 figure

Waterlogging effects on some antioxidant enzymes activities and yield of three wheat promising lines

Waterlogging is one of the most important environmental stresses that have negative effects on wheat growth and yield. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of waterlogging (0, 7, 14 and 21 d) at tillering (ZG21) and stem elongation (ZG31) stages on the content of photosynthetic pigments, proline, malondialdehyde (MDA), antioxidant enzymes, grain yield and yield components of three wheat promising lines (N-93-19, N-93-9 and N-92-9). Increasing waterlogging stress reduce the photosynthetic pigments contents and the activity of catalase enzyme while increase the proline content, MDA, superoxide dismutase and peroxidase enzymes in three wheat genotypes in both tillering and stem elongation stages. Waterlogging also reduced yield and yield components in three wheat genotypes. The results showed that N-92-9 genotype had better response than other two genotypes in all studied traits under waterlogging conditions.</p

Salinity effects on yield, yield components and nutrient ions in rapeseed genotypes

Soil salinity is a major restriction to crop production in many areas of the world. Seven spring types of rapeseed genotypes were evaluated in four salinity levels of irrigation water including 0, 4, 8 and 12 dsm-1. A factorial experiment based on completely randomized design with 3 replications was considered for evaluation of 28 treatments at green house condition. Significant mean square of salinity levels was observed for plant height, pods per plant, 1000-seed weight, seed yield, calcium (Ca), potassium (K) and sodium (Na), indicating significant differences of salinity levels for these traits. The genotypes had significant differences for all the studied traits except Ca. Significant positive correlations were detected among plant height and seed yield and other yield associated traits including number of pods per plant, 1000-seed weight and K, therefore the genotypes with high plant height in saline environment will have high seed yield and yield associated traits. The genotype L18 with high mean values of 1000-seed weight and seed yield was more tolerant to salinity than the other genotypes

Bio-Inspired Hybridization of Artificial Neural Networks: An Application for Mapping the Spatial Distribution of Soil Texture Fractions

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Sociocultural Factors Associated with Breast Self-Examination among Iranian Women

Of the ways to fight breast cancer and reduce deaths hazard due to early detection is one of early detection programs in women's breast self- examination. Examining breast by oneself increase individuals knowledge of her breast health that helps in detecting breast cancer early. Different cultural, social, family and individual factors play roles in women's behavior about breast self- examination applying PEN-3 model in this study is to analyze factors influencing on breast self-examination. The research is a descriptive- analytical, cross-sectional type. Research community consists of women at fertility age of 20-49 in sari. Sample volume is 415 individuals and sampling method is cluster method. In this study, a 50-item questionnaire based on PEN-3 was used. Questions were answered by Likert scoring method. Questionnaire was gathered by personal presence of questioners. Data was analyzed via descriptive statistics and logistic regression methods. Based on the study findings, the most significant positive behaviors related to perceptual factors included effectiveness of disease background in family and relatives (73%), believing in breast self- examination for pursuing health (93%) and the most important negative behaviors were shyness and modesty (83.9%) and increased worry (78.9%). The most remarkable positive behaviors regarding enabling factors covered the skill to do breast examination oneself (35.2%), the availability of health and therapeutic centers (80.7%) and the most significant negative behavior was being busy and lack of time (85.3%). The most important positive behavior about nurturing factors included family consent (68.9%) and the most significant negative one was the inappropriate treatment of health and therapeutic personnel (61.8%). In this study, there is a meaningful difference between employment ages, education with PEN-3 model constituents. Since behaviors due to enabling and nurturing perceptual factors have been important in doing or not doing breast self- examination; thus its worth to take measures to plan some educational and administrative intervention programs about women breast cancer early detection through sufficient knowledge of influential sociocultural factors

Studying Knowledge, Attitude and Behavior of Breast Cancer Screening Methods among Behshahr Dwelling Women

Background and purpose: Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer among all widespread cancers worldwide. After lung cancer, breast cancer is the main cause of death among women. One of the best ways to detect this disease early is to do screening. This study has been done to analyze the knowledge, attitude, and behavior of women regarding the breast cancer screening methods. Materials & Methods: The study is of cross-sectional descriptive type. The participants were 500 Behshahr dwelling women above 20 years old selected based on cluster sampling. The instrument used was a 34-item questionnaire to investigate the knowledge, attitude, and behavior of the women. The data has been analyzed through inferential statistical methods. Results: The participants' age mean was 35.16. The average knowledge score of the disease and screening methods was 1.3 and 54.6. The average attitude score of was 82.5. Regarding behavior, 13.1 percent do regular self-examination, and 15.2 percent do regular clinical examination. 16.7 percent of women have one experience of doing mammography. In the present study, there was a significant relation among knowledge, attitude and behavior. Conclusion: Since the knowledge of women was at average level and the behavior of using the screening methods was weak, planning to enable and motivate women to use the screening methods is highly emphasized

Corrigendum to “Effect of utilization of treated wastewater and seawater with Clinoptilolite-Zeolite on yield and yield components of sorghum”

The authors regret that unfortunately, a mistake was made for the affiliation of one of our co-authors: Omolbani Mohammadrezapour. It should be: bDepartment of Water Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused

Effect of acupressure with valerian oil 2.5% on the quality and quantity of sleep in patients with acute coronary syndrome in a cardiac intensive care unit

The purpose of this three-group double-blind clinical trial study was to investigate the effect of acupressure (指壓 zhǐ yā) with valerian (纈草 xié cǎo) oil 2.5% on the quality and quantity of sleep in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) in a coronary intensive care unit (CCU). This study was conducted on 90 patients with ACS in Mazandaran Heart Center (Sari, Iran) during 2013. The patients were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Patients in the acupressure with valerian oil 2.5% group (i.e., valerian acupressure group) received bilateral acupoint (穴位 xué wèi) massage with two drops of valerian oil for 2 minutes for three nights; including every point this treatment lasted in total 18 minutes. Patients in the acupressure group received massage at the same points with the same technique but without valerian oil. Patients in the control group received massage at points that were 1–1.5 cm from the main points using the same technique and for the same length of time. The quality and quantity of the patients' sleep was measured by the St. Mary's Hospital Sleep Questionnaire (SMHSQ). After the intervention, there was a significant difference between sleep quality and sleep quantity in the patients in the valerian acupressure group and the acupressure group, compared to the control group (p < 0.05). Patients that received acupressure with valerian oil experienced improved sleep quality; however, this difference was not statistically significant in comparison to the acupressure only group. Acupressure at the ear spirit gate (神門 shén mén), hand Shenmen, glabella (印堂 yìn táng), Wind Pool (風池 fēng chí), and Gushing Spring (湧泉 yǒng quán) acupoints can have therapeutic effects and may improve the quality and quantity of sleep in patients with ACS. Using these techniques in combination with herbal medicines such valerian oil can have a greater impact on improving sleep and reducing waking during the night

Bio-Inspired Hybridization of Artificial Neural Networks: An Application for Mapping the Spatial Distribution of Soil Texture Fractions

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