Plant introductions and subsequent community shifts are known to affect nutrient cycling, but most such studies have focused on nutrient enrichment effects. The nature of plant-driven nutrient depletions and the mechanisms by which these might occur are relatively poorly understood. In this study we demonstrate that the proliferation of the commonly introduced coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, inte...

Trial-based asynchronous value iteration algorithms for large Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs), such as HSVI2, FSVI and SARSOP, have made impressive progress in the past decade. In the forward exploration phase of these algorithms, only the outcome that has the highest potential impact is searched. This paper provides a novel approach, called Palm LEAf SEarch (PLEASE), wh...

This study investigated the feasibility of Date-palm) Phoenix dactylifera (Leaf Ash (DLA) (an inexpensive agricultural-byproduct) as an application to adsorb Pb(II) ions. An adsorption process was carried out to evaluate initial concentration Pb(II) ions, adsorbent dose, contact time, pH and temperature on the systematic removal of Pb(II). The effects were examined and results showed that remov...

Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) leaf extract (OPLE) possesses good ex vivo vasodilation and antioxidant properties. This study evaluated the catechin-rich OPLE antioxidant, antihypertensive, and cardiovascular effects in normal and nitric oxide (NO)-deficient hypertensive rats. OPLE was administered orally (500 mg/kg of body weight/day) to normotensive Wistar rats and N(ω)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ...

Salinity is one of the most abiotic stress destructive factors which limit growth and production of date palm offshoots considerably. In order to investigate the effects of antioxidant compounds on growth parameters as indicters to salt tolerance at the date palm offshoots cultivars of Kabkab (female) and Ghannami ahmer (male). Experiment was conducted with seven treatments and four replication...

Challenges for text processing in ancient document images are mainly due to the high degree of variations in foreground and background. Image binarization is an image segmentation technique used to separate the image into text and background components. Although several techniques for binarizing text documents have been proposed, the performance of these techniques varies and depends on the ima...

An efficient regeneration system through somatic embryogenesis was developed for date palm cv. Najda. Adventitious bud and proximal leaf segments cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with various combinations of auxins and cytokinins induced embryogenesis after at least 6 months of culture. Somatic embryogenesis induction seemed correlated with the type of the explant, the i...

ROBERT UNWIN MOFFAT was born at the London Missionary Society's station at Kuruman, South Africa, in 1866. His father was a missionary and the son of Robert Moffat (1795-1883), the pioneer missionary of that area, who had gone out to South Africa in 1816 and had founded the station at Kuruman in 1825. It was Robert Moffat who was responsible for bringing David Livingstone to Africa, and Livings...

The proliferation of single-use plastics has stimulated interest in sustainable material substitutes with sufficient ductility and structural integrity. Herein, the mechanical behavior high formability leaf sheath from a representative palm species—Areca catechu—and its immense potential for manufacturing eco-friendly food packaging are reported on. Using microstructural analyses, such as X-ray...

Tamil is an ancient language that has a vast collection of literature written on palm leaves and other materials. Palm leaf manuscripts have been used as versatile medium to record information medicine, literature, theatre, subjects. Despite the need for digitization transcription, recognizing cursive characters in remains challenging task. This study introduces novel Convolutional Neural Netwo...