Blossom thinning and managing bitter pit, storage life and fruit quality in organically grown apples

Blossom thinning and application of calcium influence storage life and apple fruit quality. Spray application of lime sulphur (4-5%) with olive oil (3%) and 0.05% synertrol oil as a surfactant at 75% bloom was most effective in reducing crop load with minimum leaf scorching and improved fruit quality in organically grown apple. Four spray applications of Biomin® calcium (3kg/ha) were highly effective in reducing bitter pit, scald and maintaining organic apple fruit quality

Production of Bio-oil with Different Oxygen Content and Characterization of Catalytic Upgrading to Transportation Fuel

The world’s increasing population requires an increase in transportation fuel production. The lack of production of transportation fuels due to the shortage of fossil fuel resources combined with concerns about global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion are the two major issues that have driven researchers to actively pursue alternative sources for oil production. Biomass is being considered as an alternative feedstock to produce fuel and chemicals due to its abundance and renewability. It has many features that make it suitable as a source of transportation fuel production. However, the bio-oil produced by the fast pyrolysis process has many undesirable characteristics that reduce its quality as a transportation fuel. The major problem that causes these negative properties is mainly the oxygenated groups that are present in the bio-oil. In this research, the goal was to produce a high-quality bio-oil with low or zero oxygen content that could be suitable for use as a transportation fuel. To do that, four different biomass feedstocks were pyrolyzed at the same operating conditions using a process developed by the UMaine group. This process is called formate-assisted fast pyrolysis or FAsP. Oils produced from the fast pyrolysis of these four feedstocks contained oxygen contents of 16, 21, 26 and 27 wt.% and were generated either by formate-assisted pyrolysis or hot-gas filter pyrolysis of pine sawdust. The generated bio-oils were then hydrotreated over an inexpensive commercially available nickel on silica-alumina catalyst and high hydrogen pressure to produce a hydrocarbon fuel. Hydrotreating experiments were conducted in a downflow trickle bed reactor at temperatures between 300-400 ºC and reactor pressures between 750-1400 psi with a hydrogen flow rate of 100 sccm over several days. Liquid yields, carbon yields, final product oxygen content, and H:C ratio were determined as a function of time-on-stream. For the 16 wt.% oxygen content bio-oil, the longest time onstream, 345 hours, was achieved at an average bed temperature of 300 °C, reactor pressure of 1400 psi, hydrogen flow rate of 100 sccm and a weight hourly space velocity of 0.06 hr-1. The carbon of the raw bio-oil that ended up in the hydrotreated oil fraction of this experiment was 91.8% with a liquid yield of 95.3%. The highest carbon and hydrogen contents measured for the hydrotreated liquid products from all experiment were 87.0 wt.%, 14.2 wt.% and the lowest were 75.0 wt.%, 10.6 wt.% respectively. Partial deactivation of the catalyst over time was evident due to the quality of the oil product collected, which saw the density, oxygen content and viscosity increase and the H:C ratio and carbon content decrease. The partial deactivation was more pronounced for higher oxygen-containing bio-oil feedstocks and for higher temperatures \u3e300 oC. Calcium formate pretreatment of biomass prior to pyrolysis produces stable bio-oils with reduced oxygen content. These stable bio-oils can be successfully upgraded into hydrocarbon fuels in a single catalytic hydrotreatment step that ran up to 15 days without significant deactivation and reactor plugging. This improvement eliminates the need for an oil stabilization step prior to hydrotreatment that is required for conventional bio-oil upgrading

Numerical modeling study of a neutron depth profiling (NDP) system for the Missouri S&T reactor

”For decades, Neutron Depth Profiling has been used for the non-destructive analysis and quantification of boron in electronic materials and lithium in lithium ion batteries. NDP is one of the few non-destructive analytical techniques capable of measuring the depth profiles of light elements to depths of several microns with nanometer spatial resolution. The technique, however, is applicable only to a handful of light elements with large neutron absorption cross sections. This work discusses the possibility of coupling Particle Induced X-ray Emission spectroscopy with Neutron Depth Profiling to yield additional information about the depth profiles of other elements within a material. The technical feasibility of developing such a system at the Missouri University of Science and Technology Reactor (MSTR) beam port is discussed. This work uses a combination of experimental neutron flux measurements with Monte Carlo radiation transport calculations to simulate a proposed NDP-PIXE apparatus at MSTR. In addition, the possibility of implementing an Artificial Neural Network to perform automated data analysis of NDP is presented. It was found that the performance of the Artificial Neural Network is at least as accurate as traditional processing approaches using stopping tables but with the added advantage that the Artificial Neural Network method requires fewer geometric approximations and accounts for all charged particle transport physics implicitly”--Abstract, page iii

Virtual Reality Game Classroom Implementation: Teacher Perspectives and Student Learning Outcomes

This study explored the influence of the virtual reality game (VRG) House of Languages on the ESL vocabulary acquisition of intermediate school students and establish how VR technology aids in improving the ESL vocabulary skills. A quasi-experimental design helped determine the impact of the VR use intervention on the learning process over the traditional ESL vocabulary acquisition method. Participation of 64 students divided randomly into an experimental group and control group; each group contained 32 students and their teacher from a local suburban intermediate school in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia. The findings from this study of independent t-tests at the end of experimental period indicated that students using the VR game House of Languages had greater achievement in learning vocabulary than those using the traditional method in learning vocabulary. The findings of paired t-tests indicated that the students in both the experimental group and control group scored higher in the post-test compared to their pre-test scores. Also, the descriptive statistics used to analyze teacher’ and students’ perceptions surveys indicate a perceived usefulness of VRG in the learning process. In spite of the fact that the participants of this study were intermediate school students, the VR technology made it applicable to primary school and high school students. So, it would be essential to create awareness among the educators that the use of the new VR technology as an effective vocabulary acquisition method in learning process should be engaged in all K12 stages not only to improve the vocabulary acquisition but to go beyond that to enhance the degree of achievement

Good Codes From Generalised Algebraic Geometry Codes

Algebraic geometry codes or Goppa codes are defined with places of degree one. In constructing generalised algebraic geometry codes places of higher degree are used. In this paper we present 41 new codes over GF(16) which improve on the best known codes of the same length and rate. The construction method uses places of small degree with a technique originally published over 10 years ago for the construction of generalised algebraic geometry codes.Comment: 3 pages, to be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT 2010) in Austin, Texas, June 201

Factors Influencing Customer Retention : A Study of Usage of Mobile Phone in Sudan

With the advancement in the telecommunication industry, mobile telecommunication and use of other phone types in Sudan have gained impetus in the recent past. This advancement in telecommunication technology in Sudan gained momentum in the year 2005. Since then, many Sudanese have embraced the technology which shows that communication technology is spreading rapidly in the country. At this very early stage of development, the industry hosts three major competitors giving the implication that the market is still green. Therefore, the company that employs the best strategies in ensuring highest customer retention has an upper hand of gaining a competitive advantage in the market and thus reaping maximum profits from the industry. Being operational in a developing country, the companies have not done much to improve customer retention strategies in their mode of service delivery. If the key players would pay the attention of improving consumer retention strategies, they would improve their service delivery infrastructure which would affect the profitability of different service providers differently depending on how consumer friendly their services are. This study seeks to establish some of the fundamental factors that affect consumer retention by investigating the three major mobile telecommunication operators in Sudan. It will focus on MTN Sudan, Sudatel and Zain Sudan (Mobitel). The study employs quantitative method by surveying university students. A discussion of the results of this study will form the basis of recommendations for companies, academicians and other operators and stakeholders of the telecommunication industry in Sudan. The realization that customer retention is highly influenced by customer loyalty and behavior among many other factors will be explored in the context of the three companies mentioned hereinbefore. It will be evident that behavioral intentions directly rely on price perceptions, perceived switching barriers and firms’ reputations

A New Clustering Protocol for Hybrid Sensor Vehicular Networks (HSVNs)

As the UAE is classified among the highest countries in road accidents; it’s an urgent necessity to derive proper and effective solutions. One of the well-known solutions is to move to the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). ITS is achieved by the implementation of advanced technologies to help the roads to be smarter, safer and more coordinated. There are different studies and researches published in this area. This thesis is mainly conducted to achieve the same goal, which is increasing the safety on our roads. The aim of this research is to build a new clustering protocol in the Hybrid Sensor Vehicular Networks (HSVN). HSVN is introduced as a new concept that integrates wireless sensor networks along with vehicular networks to increase the overall performance of both networks and the need of such new protocol in these networks is high. Although there are many published proposals, there is still a need to have a complete protocol that can reduce the shortcomings in the proposed solutions. The main features in the proposed protocol are creating a balance system by dividing the clustering process overheads between the vehicles in the network and the Road Side Unit (RSU), so instead of relying only on the vehicles’ resources, the RSU shares the process’s overhead by collecting data, calculating weighting factors, and electing suitable cluster heads. Moreover, the proposed protocol reduces the computational and the communication costs by electing two cluster heads for each cluster; one acts as the main cluster head and the other as a standby cluster head. By this feature, if a cluster head moves outside the cluster region, there is no need to run the clustering process again to elect a new cluster head as a standby cluster head exists. Also, one of the main characteristics of the new protocol is minimizing the collision in the system, and consequently increasing the throughput by defining the upper bound of the number of members in each cluster. The overall performance of the proposed protocol is very good and promises to solve many challenges in the existing protocols. In addition, the results show that this protocol outperforms one of the best existing mobility protocols in terms of the total number of clusters formed in the network, the number of single node clusters, and the saturation throughput of the clusters, the communication overheads and energy consumption reductions

Inhaled foreign body mismanaged as TB, finally removed using a rigid bronchoscopy after 6 years of impaction

Foreign body aspiration is an important cause of mortality in children aged less than three years. Foreign body (FB) inhalation can pose diagnostic and therapeutic  challenges, especially in longstanding cases and  complications such as recurrent pneumonia, lung collapse and lung abscess may develop. We report a case of an 11-year old boy with foreign body impacted in his bronchus for six years, which was mistakenly managed as pulmonary tuberculosis. Radiological evidence  confirmed the diagnosis and a rigid bronchoscopy was used to remove the metallic foreign body. The standard of care for the management of a FB in a bronchus is a  rigid bronchoscopy; however flexible bronchoscopy can be used, especially in adults. A thorough history with radiological evidence are essential and sometimes, followed by a diagnostic bronchoscopy.KEY WORDS: bronchus, foreign body aspiration, metallic foreign body, radiological evidence, rigid  bronchoscopy

Lipoproetin pattern in patients with chronic renal failure and those who had renal transplantation

Background: Vascular disease is common in patients with chronic renal failure as well as in patients with renal transplantation. It is a common cause of death in these patients. One possible factor for this increased incidence of vascular disease is hyperlipidaemia that frequently occurs in these patients. Purpose: To determine the lipoprotein pattern in patients with chronic renal failure and patients who had renal transplantation in our community. Methods: 78 patients, age ranging between 10-75 years (mean value of 42.7) were studied. They were 21 pre-dialysis patients, 42 dialyzed patients (20 peritoneal dialysis and 22 Haemodialysis), and 15 patients following renal transplantation. Fasting blood Cholesterol, triglyceride, high and low density lipoprotein (HDL and LDL) were determined. Results: 2 patients of the pre-dialysis group had high cholesterol levels, while 6 patients had high triglyceride levels and 7 patients had high serum HDL levels. Only 9 patients had ischaemic changes on E.C.Gs. 3(7.3%) patients on dialysis group had high cholesterol levels, 11.9% had high triglyceride levels. 24 patients of the dialysis group had ischaemic changes in E.C.G. 7 transplant patients had high serum triglyceride levels and only two have elevated LDL. Sudan Journal of Medical Sciences Vol. 1(1) 2006: 37-4