Temperature profiles of Agaricus bisporus in composting stages and effects of different composts formulas and casing materials on yield

Three compost formulas using different activator materials were prepared for Agaricus bisporus cultivation. A locally available casing material known as peat of Bolu district and its different combinations with perlite were used. Temperature profiles of all mixtures during composting were measured at every composting stages at various depth in order to determine the compostability level of substrates. Compost temparature steadily increased until the 10th day of composting and maximum temperatures were recorded at the second turning stage of composting. The highest yield of (5124.1 g/kg) was recorded by wheat straw mixed with pigeon manure (formula number II) with the peat as casing material mixed with perlite (80:20 in volume). The most appropriate casing materials was appeared to be the peat of Bolu district mixed with perlite (80:20; in volume) for all of compost materials. Key Words: Composting, Agaricus bisporus, compost temperature, casing material, yield. African Journal of Biotechnology Vol.3(9) 2004: 456-46

Measuring adhesion forces between hydrophilic surfaces with atomic force microscopy using flat tips

A semiconductor wafer is exposed to several processing steps when it is converted from a bare silicon wafer to one populated with millions of transistor circuits. Lithography is one of the most important and critical steps in semiconductor wafer manufacturing. It is directly responsible for shrinking feature sizes to increase transistor densities. However, with further\ud down scaling of the feature size on wafers, the magnitude of adhesive forces becomes a prohibitive factor in further increasing handling speeds and throughput of wafers.\ud \ud This thesis aims at providing a better understanding of the factors that are of prime importance for the magnitude of the adhesion forces between two parallel hydrophilic surfaces as in the wafer stepper machines between the wafer and the wafer table.\ud \ud Atomic Force Microscopy was chosen as the key method in this study due to its ability of sensing the interaction forces between surfaces with force – distance spectroscopy. Different from most adhesion studies in literature flat topped, micron sized silicon tips were used.\ud \ud The individual variables, which could play a role on the magnitude of the adhesion forces, are systematically varied in experiments, while controlling the others in order to arrive at a complete picture of the parameters that affect the adhesion forces. These variables were the surface roughness (that varied with an anisotropic wet chemical etching method), humidity of the environment, the applied load on tip, the residence time of the tip on the substrate, the tip’s retraction speed, and the tip size

Swan: for conducted amplified septet, electronics, and video projections

Swan is a multimedia work for conducted ensemble with amplified instruments, electronics and video projections. Swan is about going out: going out to the street, to the club, to a ritual, to a party or a funeral. It’s about real places with real people, but less about the realities of these places and more about their vibe. It’s about getting out of home, the studio, the institution, going to places where people connect and do things, sing, dance, laugh, cry, perform or celebrate. The music of Swan come from ‘outside.’ Swan’s aesthetic is a blend of Turkish/Islamic and pop-cultural elements. The opening section, Korridor, is a drone/ambient movement with a big trance synth part. It is ritual music. It is big, dense, heavy, and it moves slowly, like lava. Karaoke Mahshar is a Turkish Trance-Pop hybrid. It is a very melancholic, dark piece of music. The instrumental choir sing an emotional pop/“fantasy music” (a Turkish genre) melody in unison over a flamboyant electronic track. It’s the soundtrack to a club for the wasted, for emotional after-hours karaoke. The final section, Rod Modell, is a dub-techno influenced ambient movement. It is the sound of a giant, post-apocalyptic mosque - a mosque sunken in chalky waters. This section evolves to a big, stretched monophonic melody, a song from the old times, which finally cadences to an electronically processed “tilâvet”. I started composing Swan in July 2016 in Turkey, before the military coup attempt took place. The work is not programmatic, however, the sound materials I worked with, the musical references and the sonic and visual iconography it incorporates are rather influenced by and derive from the sounds, sights and emotions I experienced during my stay. By the end of my visit, a person who had been very dear to my heart, Ferhunde Köke, had passed away. I recorded the sounds of her burial accompanied by a hafız’s recitation of the Surah Al-Baqarah 2:156 from the Holy Qur’an which I edited, processed and ended this work with

Portable High-Performance Indexing for Vector Product Format Spatial Databases

Geo-spatial databases have an overall performance problem because of their complexity and large size. For this reason, many researchers seek new ways to improve the overall performance of geo-spatial databases. Typically, these research efforts are focused on complex indexing structures and query processing methods to capture the relationships between the individual features of fully-functional geo-spatial databases. Visualization applications, such as combat simulators and mission planning tools, suffer from the general performance problems associated with geo-spatial databases. This research focuses on building a high-performance geo-spatial database for visualization applications. The main approach is to simplify the complex data model and to index it with high-performance indexing structures. Complex features are reduced to simple primitives, then indexed using a combination of a disk-based array and B(+)-Trees. Test results show that there is a significant performance improvement gained by the new data model and indexing schema for low to medium zoom levels. For high zoom levels, there is a performance drop due to the indexing schema\u27s overhead

How a public health crisis turned into a localised human security crisis in the Global South

Mobility restrictions, lockdowns, and economic slumps have endangered communities during the pandemic in the Global South. But a human security approach can help protect people’s lives by addressing the pandemic‘s multidimensional impact, writes Alexandra Abello-Colak (LSE Latin America and Caribbean Centre)