background and objective: pigment production by microorganisms is important due to more rapid growth, higher efficiency, easier extraction, and antimicrobial effects compared to other methods. the aim of the present study is to isolate and identify antibiotic pigment-producing actinomycetes from the soil of the persian gulf and to evaluate the antibiotic activity of their pigments in the second...

North Carolina has numerous low-income minority communities and tribal areas where basic public health amenities are lacking. Disparities in clean air, safe drinking water, and toxin-free soil create human exposures that result in poor health, depressed property value, and more contaminated environments than are present in higher income communities.

Soil and water conservation (SWC) is being advocated as an integral part of agricultural land management it not only controls/minimizes soil erosion but also restores/rehabilitates the degraded lands. The purpose this study was to evaluate impact practices in improving fertility landscapes Damota area, southern Ethiopia. Forty-eight samples (both disturbed core samples) were collected from cons...

In many civil engineering practices like design of landfills, earth dams, pavements and agricultural issues, it is necessary to know the permeability coefficient of soils. In situ tests are frequently used to predict permeability of the soil. On the other hand, high ability of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) in prediction of nonlinear behavior has attracted the attention of many researchers. ...

A new type of controlled release fertilizers coated with polyurea was prepared. The granulated urea was firstly changed into a liquid urea by heating as the coating liquid. By spraying uniformly the urea was coated with the polyurea synthesized by the reaction of isocyanates with a liquid urea. The effects of different modifiers on N release characteristics of polyurea-coated urea (PCU) were st...

A unique lunar property The moon has a unique property compared to the terrestrial and gas giant planets of our solar system. This property consists of the ability to record and preserve evidence of both external and internal events and processes over a time span that includes most of solar system history. Every exposed surface of the moon accumulates implanted solar wind atoms, is modified by ...

Nitrate sorption potentials of three surface soils (soils-1-3) were evaluated under different solute concentrations, i.e. 1-100 mg L(-1). Batch and diffusion-cell adsorption experiments were conducted to delineate the diffusion property and maximum specific nitrate adsorption capacity (MSNAC) of the soils. Ho's pseudo-second order model well fitted the batch adsorption kinetics data (R(2)>0.99)...

The 2012 drought was one of the most extensive drought events in half a century, resulting in over USD 12 billion in economic loss in the United States and substantial indirect impacts on global food security and commodity prices. An important feature of the 2012 drought was rapid development and intensification in late spring/early summer, a critical time for crop development and investment pl...

A soil-water characteristic (SWC) curve describes the amount of water retained in a soil (expressed as mass or volume water content, m or v) under equilibrium at a given matric potential. An SWC is an important hydraulic property, related to size and connectedness of pore spaces, hence strongly affected by soil texture and structure, and by other constituents, including organic matter. Modeling...

Software for two dimensional visualization of values that have been automatically measured with in place sensors is difficult to find. Usually these programs assume a regular area and a regular grid of measuring points. In practice, however, both the shape of the area and the position of the sensors are often irregular. This paper describes the program TDRFree, which visualizes the soil moistur...