The need for identification of soil microbial community mainly depends on direct extraction of DNA from soil, a multifaceted environment that is a major pool for microbial genetic diversity. The soil DNA extraction procedures usually suffer from two major problems, namely, inappropriate rupturing of cells and contamination with humic substances. In the present study, five protocols for single t...

The RAS, “Robot Antartico di Superficie”, is intended to operate in a hostile and generally unknown environment, where the ability of sensing obstacles or special features (crevasses, sastrugi, composition of the soil) can represent the key point to successfully perform the required mission or to fail: wind storms (and many other atmospheric phenomena giving rise to white out) can make useless ...

Background & aim: Sepsis is a major cause of neonatal mortality in the developing countries. The prevention and management of this infection require informed workforce and availability of necessary resources and equipment. Regarding this, the present study was conducted to investigate healthcare workers’ neonatal sepsis knowledge; prevention and management strategies in use for the control of t...

Since no organization can have unlimited resources, strategists should decide on a strategy that can provide the greatest benefits to the organization. Decisions on strategy formulation commit the organization to produce specific products, work in specific markets, and exploit certain resources and technologies for a relatively long time. Strategies dictate the long-term competitive advantages ...

Global Positioning System (GPS) has been widely used for precise positioning and navigation and it has also been increasingly used as a data source for Geographic Information System (GIS). This paper describes the concepts of integrating GPS, GIS and wireless communication for the development of a mobile equipment management system. Such a system could result in considerable operational cost sa...

Prognostics and health management (PHM) is a field of research and application which aims at making use of past, present and future information on the environmental, operational and usage conditions of an equipment in order to detect its degradation, diagnose its faults, predict and proactively manage its failures. The present paper reviews the state of knowledge on the methods for PHM, placing...

One of the major challenges for agriculture is to understand the effects of agricultural practices on soil properties and diffuse pollution, to support practical farm-scale land management. Three conventionally managed grassland fields with similar short-term management, but different ploughing histories, were studied on a long-term research platform: the North Wyke Farm Platform. The aims were...

The concept of maintenance in the field of complex equipment was developed in the USA being quickly adopted by European countries and Japan. The American maintenance concept has the significance of creating a support system for industrial equipment functioning. Functional maintenance is one of the most frequent used methods in maintenance management for industrial enterprises. This paper tries ...