Improvement of Pineapple Production on Tropical Peat Through Fertilizer Use

Information on the agronomic characteristics and nutritional requirements of pineapple (cv. Gandul) is lacking in peat soil. Therefore, studies in the field at two sites (site 1 and site 2), glasshouse and laboratory were carried out to investigate the effects of N, P, K, Ca, Mg and Cu on growth, yield and quality of pineapple and to assess the loss of the applied nutrients through leaching. Six levels of each of N, P, K, Ca, Mg and Cu were studied separately at each site of the field in a RCB design with three replications. In the glasshouse, three levels of each of the above nutrients were studied with soils from both sites. Leaching studies using soil columns were conducted in the laboratory with two levels of each nutrient for a period of 3 0 days. Plant height and leaf number increased with age up to forcing time at both sites. D-leaf length and area were influenced with N application, while the leaf dry weight was influenced with Mg at site 2 . The leaf nutrient concentrations were influenced by N, P, Ca and Mg at site 1 and by N, P and K applications at site 2. Leaf nutrient concentrations increased up to six months of plant age and declined at forcing at both sites. The mean fruit weight of pineapple responded quadratically with N application at both sites and with Ca at site 1 and declined linearly with the increment of P at site 2. There was no significant effect of nutrients on fruit quality except for P on sugar content at site 1 . Fruit yield was positively correlated with leaf N concentrations at both sites and negatively correlated with Cu at site 1

The benefits of using a walking interface to navigate virtual environments

Navigation is the most common interactive task performed in three-dimensional virtual environments (VEs), but it is also a task that users often find difficult. We investigated how body-based information about the translational and rotational components of movement helped participants to perform a navigational search task (finding targets hidden inside boxes in a room-sized space). When participants physically walked around the VE while viewing it on a head-mounted display (HMD), they then performed 90% of trials perfectly, comparable to participants who had performed an equivalent task in the real world during a previous study. By contrast, participants performed less than 50% of trials perfectly if they used a tethered HMD (move by physically turning but pressing a button to translate) or a desktop display (no body-based information). This is the most complex navigational task in which a real-world level of performance has been achieved in a VE. Behavioral data indicates that both translational and rotational body-based information are required to accurately update one's position during navigation, and participants who walked tended to avoid obstacles, even though collision detection was not implemented and feedback not provided. A walking interface would bring immediate benefits to a number of VE applications

Investigating IoT Middleware Platforms for Smart Application Development

With the growing number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the data generated through these devices is also increasing. By 2030, it is been predicted that the number of IoT devices will exceed the number of human beings on earth. This gives rise to the requirement of middleware platform that can manage IoT devices, intelligently store and process gigantic data generated for building smart applications such as Smart Cities, Smart Healthcare, Smart Industry, and others. At present, market is overwhelming with the number of IoT middleware platforms with specific features. This raises one of the most serious and least discussed challenge for application developer to choose suitable platform for their application development. Across the literature, very little attempt is done in classifying or comparing IoT middleware platforms for the applications. This paper categorizes IoT platforms into four categories namely-publicly traded, open source, developer friendly and end-to-end connectivity. Some of the popular middleware platforms in each category are investigated based on general IoT architecture. Comparison of IoT middleware platforms in each category, based on basic, sensing, communication and application development features is presented. This study can be useful for IoT application developers to select the most appropriate platform according to their application requirement

Debranching improves morpho - physiological characters, fruit quality and yield of tomato

Farmers are commercially cultivated tomato with different levels of shoot pruning but this production practice has not been defined clearly. The experiment was conducted under sub-tropical condition to assess the effect of different levels of debranching on morpho-physiological, reproductive and yield contributing characters in determinate tomato cultivar cv. Binatomato-5. The debranching levels were: i) control, ii) only mainstem (MS), iii) MS with 2 branches, iv) MS with 3 branches and v) MS with 4 branches. Based on recommended spacing (50 cm × 50 cm), the higher fruit yield plant⁻¹ as well as ruit yield per hectare were observed in more branch bearing plants of the treatment control (MS with 5-6 branches), MS with 3 branches and MS with 4 branches due to production of higher number of fruits plant⁻¹ with being the highest in MS with 3 branches due to increase fruit size. The lowest fruit yield per plant as well as per hectare was observed in uniculm plants due to lower number of fruits per plant. This study suggests that plants that have MS with three branches may be recommended for commercial cultivation of tomato under sub-tropical condition

Chlorinated Pesticide Residue Status in Tomato, Potato and Carrot

A study was carried out to identify the bioaccumulation and the ascertain level of chlorinated pesticide residues in some vegetables collected from market baskets of New market, Dhaka, Bangladesh namely potato, tomato and carrot. The samples were randomly collected from different shops and analyzed by capillary column of Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) with Electron Impact Ionization (EI) method for the detection of chlorinated pesticide. The results of the study revealed that collected samples of potato, tomato, red amaranth and spinach were contaminated with some chlorinated substances. But Indian spinach and carrot were free of contamination with organochlorine pesticide

Signatures of photon and axion-like particle mixing in the gamma-ray burst jet

Photons couple to Axion-Like Particles (ALPs) or more generally to any pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson in the presence of an external electromagnetic field. Mixing between photons and ALPs in the strong magnetic field of a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB) jet during the prompt emission phase can leave observable imprints on the gamma-ray polarization and spectrum. Mixing in the intergalactic medium is not expected to modify these signatures for ALP mass > 10^(-14) eV and/or for < nG magnetic field. We show that the depletion of photons due to conversion to ALPs changes the linear degree of polarization from the values predicted by the synchrotron model of gamma ray emission. We also show that when the magnetic field orientation in the propagation region is perpendicular to the field orientation in the production region, the observed synchrotron spectrum becomes steeper than the theoretical prediction and as detected in a sizable fraction of GRB sample. Detection of the correlated polarization and spectral signatures from these steep-spectrum GRBs by gamma-ray polarimeters can be a very powerful probe to discover ALPs. Measurement of gamma-ray polarization from GRBs in general, with high statistics, can also be useful to search for ALPs.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in JCAP with minor change

A review on activated carbon: process, application and prospects

Activated carbon (AC) is used in different states of applications after its discovery as a strong and reliable adsorbent. An overview on AC is presented together with revisiting the sources of AC generation; methods used to generate AC comprising of pyrolysis activation; physical activation; chemical activation and steam pyrolysis. The important factors affecting the AC production, the possible applications of AC and their future prospects are also discussed. AC is applied in water, wastewater and leachate treatments in many countries, especially to polish the color, remove the odor and some heavy metals. It is cheap and available, and can be produced from agricultural waste materials, e.g. rice husk, palm oil shell and coconut shell. The AC’s fine and porous structure and an extremely large particle surface area (>1000 m2/g) results in making it possessed powerful adsorptive properties. Therefore, the adsorption process using AC is found to be a potentially viable method of removing pollutants from aqueous solutions