Great Gap Research Articles

Assessment of Knowledge, Concerns and Support of Physicians towards Bio banks in Pakistan, and their Willingness to Donate

Bio specimen collection and storage and bio bank data have numerous ethical issues. Stakeholders' views on these ethical problems are essential because they may assist establish ethical standards for bio banking. Physicians are key stakeholders because they may contact prospective participants and become bio bank users. The aim of this research is to assess Pakistani doctors' views and knowledge regarding bio banking and willingness to donate. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted to poll Pakistani physicians’ attitudes and views regarding bio banks. Between January and April 2021.473 doctors completed the questionnaire. Participants had sufficient knowledge of bio banking. Of those, 74.2 stated that they had heard of the term "Human Genome Project," while 72.5% revealed that they were familiar with the term "bio banking." 61.5% of the participants showed their willingness to donate bio specimens. Marital status (0.001), faculty (0.001), involvement in research (0.038), blood and tissue testing in recent years (0.420) and demonstrated a significant relationship with willingness to donate. While general health status, recent hospitalization, family history of inherited diseases, incidence of chronic disease, and gender had no statistically significant associations with willingness to donate. Although65.8% agreed that bio banks should be able to exchange bio specimens with foreign research groups and only 49.5% agreed on collaboration with pharmaceutical companies. Although more than half of Pakistani doctors heard of bio banking, the presence of bio banks in Pakistan was restricted. They were concerned about marketing, widespread consent and confidentiality. There is a great gap of knowledge and awareness among stakeholders that should encompass several educational initiatives. Community conversations on the problems of marketing and the return of research findings should begin to achieve an agreement.

Influence of the Gap between Substrates in the Laser-Induced Transference of High-Viscosity Pastes.

Laser-induced forward transfer for high-viscosity—of Pa·s—pastes differ from standard LIFT processes in its dynamics. In most techniques, the transference after setting a great gap does not modify the shape acquired by the fluid, so it stretches until it breaks into droplets. In contrast, there is no transferred material when the gap is bigger than three times the paste thickness in LIFT for high-viscosity pastes, and only a spray is observed on the acceptor using this configuration. In this work, the dynamics of the paste have been studied using a finite-element model in COMSOL Multiphysics, and the behavior of the paste varying the gap between the donor and the acceptor substrates has also been modeled. The paste bursts for great gaps, but it is confined when the acceptor is placed close enough. The obtained simulations have been compared with a previous work, in which the paste structures were photographed. The analysis of the simulations in terms of speed allows for predicting the burst of the paste—spray regime—and the construction of a printability map regarding the gap between the substrates.

The decision-point-dilemma: Yet another problem of responsibility in human-AI interaction

AI as decision support supposedly helps human agents make ‘better’ decisions more efficiently. However, research shows that it can, sometimes greatly, influence the decisions of its human users. While there has been a fair amount of research on intended AI influence, there seem to be great gaps within both theoretical and practical studies concerning unintended AI influence. In this paper I aim to address some of these gaps, and hope to shed some light on the ethical and moral concerns that arise with unintended AI influence. I argue that unintended AI influence has important implications for the way we perceive and evaluate human-AI interaction. To make this point approachable from both the theoretical and practical side, and to avoid anthropocentrically-laden ambiguities, I introduce the notion of decision points. Based on this, the main argument of this paper will be presented in two consecutive steps: i) unintended AI influence doesn’t allow for an appropriate determination of decision points - this will be introduced as decision-point-dilemma, and ii) this has important implications for the ascription of responsibility.

Data-Driven Consumption Load Monitoring and Adjustment Strategy in Smart Grid

The enhancement of the intelligent construction of the power grid and widespread popularity of smart meters enable large amounts of electrical energy consumption data to be collected and analyzed. Based on the data, the energy provider gives a guiding price in the future periods to users. It encourages users to be more economical and smarter in the process of using electricity. By applying the social welfare model to equate demand and supply in every time interval, we gain the optimal prices and generation capacity. Nevertheless, the truth is that there is a great gap between the consumers’ booked electrical energy consumption and the optimal generation capacity, causing the power system overload and even outage. This article puts forward a novel automatic process control strategy in order to monitor the gap between the consumers’ booked electrical energy consumption and optimal generation capacity by using statistical method to predict the future one. When the predicted value exceeds the boundary, the energy provider adopts the changeable electricity price to stimulate consumers to adjust their electrical energy demands so that it can have smoothly actual electrical energy consumption. Our adjustment method is data-driven exponential function-based adjustment. Case study results show that the strategy can obtain small adjustment times, stable actual consumption load, and controllable prediction errors. Different from the linear monitoring and adjustment strategy, our approach obtains almost the same adjustment frequency, less standard deviation of residuals, and higher total social welfare and energy provider profit.

Patient-Pathway Analysis of Tuberculosis Services in Cameroon.

In Cameroon, in 2019, tuberculosis (TB) treatment coverage was estimated at 53%, indicating that almost half of all people sick with TB were not diagnosed or linked to care. To inform strategies to improve access to TB services, we conducted an evaluation of the alignment between patient-initiated care-seeking behavior and spatial and institutional allocation of TB services. Data sources included the Cameroon Demographic and Health Survey (2018), the Health Facility List (2017), and routinely collected TB surveillance data. Data visualization was performed in Tableau and QGIS. The pathway analysis showed that only an estimated 9% of people attended a health facility providing TB services at initial care-seeking, with access varying from <3% to 16% across the ten regions of the country. While 72% of government and 56% of private hospitals (Level 2 facilities) provide TB services, most Cameroonians (87%) initially chose primary care (Level 1) or informal private sector sites (Level 0) without TB services. The gaps were greatest in regions with the highest prevalence of poverty, a significant determinant for TB. These results indicate that access may be improved by expanding TB services at both public and private facilities across the country, prioritizing regions with the greatest gaps.

Research Infrastructure Contact Zones: A method to visualise and align the activities of major biodiversity informatics initiatives

In an effort to characterise the various dimensions of activity within the biodiversity informatics landscape, we developed a framework to survey these dimensions for ten major organisations*1 relative to both their current activities and long-term strategic ambitions. This survey assessed the contact between these infrastructure organisations by capturing the breadth of activities for each infrastructure across five categories (data, standards, software, hardware and policy), for nine types of data (specimens, collection descriptions, opportunistic observations, systematic observations, taxonomies, traits, geological data, molecular data, and literature), and for seven phases of activity (creation, aggregation, access, annotation, interlinkage, analysis, and synthesis). This generated a dataset of 6,300 verified observations, which have been scored and validated by leading members of each infrastructure organisation. In this analysis of the resulting data, we address a set of high-level questions about the overall biodiversity informatics landscape, looking at the greatest gaps, overlap and possible rate-limiting steps. Across the infrastructure organisations, we also explore how far each is in relation to achieving its ambitions and the extent of its niche relative to other organisations. Our results show that when viewed by scope, most infrastructures occupy a relatively narrow niche in the overall landscape of activity, with the notable exception of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and possibly LifeWatch. Niches associated with molecular data and biological taxonomy are very well filled, suggesting there is still considerable room for growth in other areas, with the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) and the Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem Research Infrastructure (eLTER RI) showing the highest levels of difference between their current activities and stated ambitions, potentially reflecting the relative youth of these organisations. iNaturalist, the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Catalogue of Life all occupy narrow and tightly circumscribed niches. These organisations are also amongst the closest to achieving their stated ambitions within their respective areas of activity. The largest gaps in infrastructure activity relate to the development of hardware and standards, with many gaps set to be addressed if the stated ambitions of those surveyed come to fruition. Nevertheless, some gaps persist, outlining a potential role for this survey as a planning tool to help coordinate and align investment in future biodiversity informatics activities. GBIF and LifeWatch are the two infrastructures where there is the most similarity in ambition with DiSSCo, with the greatest overlap concentrated on activities related to data/content, specimen data and their shared ambition to interlink information. While overlap appears intense, the analysis is limited by the resolution of the survey framework and ignores existing collaborations between infrastructures. In addition to presenting the results of this survey, we outline our plans to publish this work and a proposal to develop the methodology as an interactive web-based tool. This would allow other projects and infrastructures to self-score their activities and visualise their niche within the current landscape, encouraging better global alignment of activities. For example, our results should make it easier for initiatives to strengthen collaboration and differentiate work when their activities overlap. Likewise, this approach would be useful for funding agencies when targeting gaps in the informatics landscape or increasing the technical maturity of certain critical activities, e.g., to improve immature data standards. While no framework is perfect, we hope to encourage a dialogue on the potential for taking an algorithmic approach to community alignment and see this as a means of strengthening community cooperation when addressing problems that require global cooperation.

Using Goals of Care Conversations to Build Ethics Competency

"Literature indicates that 99% of clinicians believe that timely Goals of Care (GOC) conversations are important. However, only 11% of patients report having had GOC conversations with their providers throughout the trajectory of their disease. Congruent to this, it is reported that only 41% of patients feel that they have received care consistent with their preferences. One can therefore deduct that there is a great ethical gap in how patients are approached by healthcare providers, especially respecting their autonomous decision-making. As a concept, GOC refers to discussing patients’ therapy intend, which is informed by the patients’ hope, fears, information preferences, presumed minimally acceptable quality of life, and expectations for their future. Therefore it needs to be an explicit conversation which is personalized to each patient’s context and circumstances. Within these conceptual ideas there are a myriad of ethical values which needs to be addressed. The author will explain how a Goals of Care initiative was started at the hospital where the author is a clinical ethicist and how these interactions with various members of the care team have been used to build ethics competencies of all the members of the care team. This innovative approach has been applauded by the participants for making ethics practical and applicable. The structure of the talk will focus on basic literature review, discussion on initiative (how it was set up), challenges, lessons learnt, value in ethics competency development. "

Development of A Mobile Unit for The Manufacture of Non-Conventional Feed تطوير وحدة متنقلة لتصنيع الأعلاف غير التقليدية

Whereas the burning of the agricultural residues affects environmental pollution in Arab Republic of Egypt, so many researches in different trends proceeded to overcome such problem, in other hand the researches aimed to get benefit of residues as they have high economic value. One of those trends is recycling of these waste to produce . Reason behind such thought in this direction is the great gap between the fodders needs for animal farms as cows and buffalos which reaches to 13 million tons / year and the production volume of fodders factories which reaches to 2.5 million tons/year . The research confirmed that exploitation of 40 % of the agricultural residues to produce untraditional fodders may compensate part of this gap . Whereas some of the present machinery do not compatible with the requested standards and the high cost of transporting of these residues to place of manufacturing, in addition of its seasonal production periods and its several varieties, so need of manufacturing multipurpose mobile fodder production units appeared in order to adapt varieties of agricultural residues. The research aims to design and manufacture mobile integrated units to produce feeds from untraditional resources that meet the recommended technical standards, in addition an economical study has been carried out on such a unit to recognize its economical feasibility. So the following design assumptions have been taking into consideration : 1-The unit was designed to be in movable status to suit the small villages with productivity of 500 kg/hour . 2-The unit driven by the agriculture tractor which is available in the farms as a power source with rating power fluctuated between 60 – 80 HP. 3-The unit consists of five essential units which are ( chopper unit – hammer mill & crushing unit – mixing unit – pressing unit – Trailer and Power train Unit) . 4-The transport means which carry the materials between units designed as follows : -Transfer the cutting residues from the cutting machine to the hammer mill & crushing machine by gravity . -Transfer the crushed materials from hammer mill & crushing machine to mixing unit by left helical lever . -Transfer the mixture from the mixing unit to the lower tank of the mixer using gravity -Transfer the mixture from the lower tank of the mixer to the pressing unit using by left helical lever 5-Transfer the power from the tractor to the unit using PTO power taken off the tractor and the motion transferred to the various parts of the unit through gear box, drive shafts, pulleys and belts to adapt the revolution speeds needed to each unit

A ferroptosis-associated gene signature for the prediction of prognosis and therapeutic response in luminal-type breast carcinoma

Ferroptosis is a new form of regulated cell death (RCD), and its emergence has provided a new approach to the progression and drug resistance of breast cancer (BRCA). However, there is still a great gap in the study of ferroptosis-related genes in BRCA, especially luminal-type BRCA patients. We downloaded the mRNA expression profiles and corresponding clinical data of BRCA patients from the Molecular Taxonomy of Breast Cancer International Consortium (METABRIC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) databases. Then, we built a prognostic multigene signature with ferroptosis-related differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the METABRIC cohort and validated it in the TCGA cohort. The predictive value of this signature was investigated in terms of the immune microenvironment and the probability of a response to immunotherapy and chemotherapy. The patients were divided into a high-risk group and a low-risk group according to the ferroptosis-associated gene signature, and the high-risk group had a worse overall survival (OS). The risk score based on the 10 ferroptosis-related gene-based signature was determined to be an independent prognostic predictor in both the METABRIC and TCGA cohorts (HR, 1.41, 95% CI, 1.14–1.76, P = 0.002; HR, 2.19, 95% CI, 1.13–4.26, P = 0.02). Gene set enrichment analysis indicated that the term “cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction” was enriched in the high-risk score subgroup. Moreover, the immune infiltration scores of most immune cells were significantly different between the two groups, the low-risk group was much more sensitive to immunotherapy, and six drugs might have potential therapeutic implications in the high-risk group. Finally, a nomogram incorporating a classifier based on the 10 ferroptosis-related genes, tumor stage, age and histologic grade was established. This nomogram showed favorable discriminative ability and could help guide clinical decision-making for luminal-type breast carcinoma.

Management of adrenal insufficiency: A survey of perceptions and practices of physicians from the Middle East and North Africa

Introduction: Treatment of adrenal insufficiency (AI) requires correct lifelong use of glucocorticoids (GCs) with early dose adjustments to cover the increased demand in stress to avoid life-threatening emergencies. Objectives: We determine the current specific knowledge of physicians in a convenience sample on the pathophysiological and clinical aspects of AI in the two regions of North Africa and the Middle East. Materials and Methods: Participants (n = 96) were invited to complete an electronic questionnaire with various possible answers on the subject of multiple-choice questions covering physiology, pharmacology, and clinical management and define respondents' professional profiles. Results: The present study suggests that in the investigated settings, physicians' knowledge of physiology and pharmacology GCs, medical replacement strategies in AI, and prevention of adrenal crisis may be insufficient. Great knowledge gaps were demonstrated. Conclusions: There is a need for continuous structured education and training on AI in both general medical and endocrine forums.

Implementation strategy of primary health care in Ovia communities

Primary health care is the essential health service provided at the grassroot level. Over the years the implementation of Primary Health Care (PHC) programmes in Edo state are bedeviled with associated challenges such as limited community participation, great communication gap that limit evaluation processes of PHC programme and slow pace collaboration among stakeholders. These challenges need to be averted through effective and people oriented strategies to ensure the implementation of primary health care. A descriptive research design with a population of the study comprised 1,024 primary health care stakeholders in Edo state. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 180 respondents for the study. The study found that intersectoral collaboration involving partnerships with community health agencies such as village health committees and ward health committees significantly influenced the implementation of PHC. Intersectoral collaboration, community mobilization strategy and community feedback mechanism are effective and efficient strategies for improved implementation of PHC programmes. The study recommended among others that National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) and State Primary Health Care Development Agency (SPHCDA) should strengthen partnership with international health organizations such as WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, UNDP and boost confidence and trust of these international organizations.

Rediseño institucional para el cierre de brecha residual de telecomunicaciones en Perú: Una tercera vía de intervención para la emergencia de redes comunitarias sostenibles

The problem of the lack of connectivity in a large part of the world has been further exposed due to the pandemic COVID-19; particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, including in Peru. We have witnessed the lack of Internet access limits the conditions of development and widens the social and economic gaps among the people connected in urban areas and those who are not connected in rural areas. This problem has a multidimensional nature and arises from several underlying and structural causes that have been widely diagnosed so far. In this regard, this paper is focused on Peru, but it is potentially applicable to Latin America and the Caribbean. The new contribution is the definition of the residual gap of rural telecommunications (“residual gap”), understood as the group of localities that are not either prioritized or to be prioritized by the private sector or the traditional public interventions in the short and medium term. Likewise, we have analyzed the effectiveness of the current institutional design to deal with the connectivity gap and have proposed the incorporation of a third channel for the whole “residual gap”: a model of bottom-up governance for the emergency of sustainable community networks. According to its characteristics, this third channel demands the reconfiguration of the roles in the different social classes and enables the inclusion of territoriality and interculturality approaches in a wide range of geographical spaces. Finally, even though the localities that are part of the residual gap are characterized by a range of adverse conditions for the provision of traditional telecommunication services or others, for the rural Peruvian case, a great residual gap has a huge community network, beyond telecommunications (e.g. rural communities, indigenous populations, water and irrigation associations, etc.). This previous condition is a great advantage for the successful application of the model of community networks proposed in the institutional redesign. Its identification of opportunities is the third contribution of this paper.

Advances in tissue engineering of vasculature through three-dimensional bioprinting.

A significant challenge facing tissue engineering is the fabrication of vasculature constructs which contains vascularized tissue constructs to recapitulate viable, complex and functional organs or tissues, and free-standing vascular structures potentially providing clinical applications in the future. Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting has emerged as a promising technology, possessing a number of merits that other conventional biofabrication methods do not have. Over the last decade, 3D bioprinting has contributed a variety of techniques and strategies to generate both vascularized tissue constructs and free-standing vascular structures. This review focuses on different strategies to print two kinds of vasculature constructs, namely vascularized tissue constructs and vessel-like tubular structures, highlighting the feasibility and shortcoming of the current methods for vasculature constructs fabrication. Generally, both direct printing and indirect printing can be employed in vascularized tissue engineering. Direct printing allows for structural fabrication with synchronous cell seeding, while indirect printing is more effective in generating complex architecture. During the fabrication process, 3D bioprinting techniques including extrusion bioprinting, inkjet bioprinting and light-assisted bioprinting should be selectively implemented to exert advantages and obtain the desirable tissue structure. Also, appropriate cells and biomaterials matter a lot to match various bioprinting techniques and thus achieve successful fabrication of specific vasculature constructs. The 3D bioprinting has been developed to help provide various fabrication techniques, devoting to producing structurally stable, physiologically relevant, and biologically appealing constructs. However, although the optimization of biomaterials and innovation of printing strategies may improve the fabricated vessel-like structures, 3D bioprinting is still in the infant period and has a great gap between in vitro trials and in vivo applications. The article reviews the present achievement of 3D bioprinting in generating vasculature constructs and also provides perspectives on future directions of advanced vasculature constructs fabrication.

GFP-fused yeast cells as whole-cell biosensors for genotoxicity evaluation of nitrosamines.

Nitrosamine compounds, represented by N-nitrosodimethylamine, are regarded as potentially genotoxic impurities (PGIs) due to their hazard warning structure, which has attracted great attention of pharmaceutical companies and regulatory authorities. At present, great research gaps exist in genotoxicity assessment and carcinogenicity comparison of nitrosamine compounds. In this work, a collection of GFP-fused yeast cells representing DNA damage repair pathways were used to evaluate the genotoxicity of eight nitrosamine compounds (10-6-105 μg/mL). The high-resolution expression profiles of GFP-fused protein revealed the details of the DNA damage repair of nitrosamines. Studies have shown that nitrosamine compounds can cause extensive DNA damage and activate multiple repair pathways. The evaluation criteria based on the total expression level of protein show a good correlation with the mammalian carcinogenicity data TD50, and the yeast cell collection can be used as a potential reliable criterion for evaluating the carcinogenicity of compounds. The assay based on DNA damage pathway integration has high sensitivity and can be used as a supplementary method for the evaluation of trace PGIs in actual production. KEY POINTS: • The genotoxicity mechanism of nitrosamines was systematically studied. • The influence of compound structure on the efficacy of genotoxicity was explored. • GFP-fused yeast cells have the potential to evaluate impurities in production.

Regional inequality of resident income and its determinants: A case study of Zhejiang Province, China

This paper focuses on the regional inequality of resident income in local China at the county or district level, and Zhejiang Province is set as the empirical case. It takes a geographic approach to detect the spatial distribution pattern of resident income, and explore the relationship with regional-specific socio-economic factors. The analytical framework proposed by us has been proved appropriate by the case study. Our study results show that in terms of the resident income level, there exists great regional gap in Zhejiang with the northeast wealthy cluster and much poorer cluster in the southwest. The disposable income of residents is mainly determined by commerce prosperity, urban intensity and technological capacity of local areas, while the effect of regional income, household deposits and industrial production are much less or no significant. Our findings for Zhejiang lead us to suggest that those local states seeking to improve people’s livelihood and income should not solely rely on the industrial or manufacturing expansion, but pay more attention to business environment, urban construction and indigenous innovation. Also, to narrow the significant regional gap of resident income, extra efforts should be made to push the regional cooperation system in economic development.

Rethinking the systematics of history with Jean Baechler beyond Reinhart Koselleck – the challenge of the three M's (meta, macro, micro)

ABSTRACT The article develops three complementary lines of argument. It first points to the great theoretical gap that characterizes Koselleck's work: quasi-transcendental anthropology on the one hand, and historical semantics on the other. The hybrid status of historical semantics, both macro- and micro- sociological, is also specified. Secondly, the article critiques the neo-Hobbesianism implicit in Koselleck's historical ontology. Departing from Jean Baechler's anthropology, it reformulates the conceptual framework within which the initial foundational ambition could be maintained without however renewing the aporiai of the Koselleckian systematics. Finally, it asks how to connect the three M's (the meta-historical, the macro- and the micro-sociological levels). The solution focuses on the core aspects of the intermediate, macro-sociological level to make the case for a heuristic reciprocal hybridization of meta-historical anthropology, of comparative historical sociology and of the pragmatic history of historical semantics.

HIV services in sub-Saharan Africa: the greatest gap is men

40 years ago the first cases of what would become known as AIDS were reported by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.1 Since then, millions of lives have been lost, but gradually remarkable progress has been made across the HIV continuum of care. By 2019, 81% of people living with HIV (PLHIV) worldwide knew their status, 82% of these were on antiretroviral therapy (ART), and 88% of individuals on ART were virologically suppressed.2 These averages, however, mask substantial variability between and within regions.

Automated coronary calcium scoring using deep learning with multicenter external validation

Coronary artery disease (CAD), the most common manifestation of cardiovascular disease, remains the most common cause of mortality in the United States. Risk assessment is key for primary prevention of coronary events and coronary artery calcium (CAC) scoring using computed tomography (CT) is one such non-invasive tool. Despite the proven clinical value of CAC, the current clinical practice implementation for CAC has limitations such as the lack of insurance coverage for the test, need for capital-intensive CT machines, specialized imaging protocols, and accredited 3D imaging labs for analysis (including personnel and software). Perhaps the greatest gap is the millions of patients who undergo routine chest CT exams and demonstrate coronary artery calcification, but their presence is not often reported or quantitation is not feasible. We present two deep learning models that automate CAC scoring demonstrating advantages in automated scoring for both dedicated gated coronary CT exams and routine non-gated chest CTs performed for other reasons to allow opportunistic screening. First, we trained a gated coronary CT model for CAC scoring that showed near perfect agreement (mean difference in scores = −2.86; Cohen’s Kappa = 0.89, P < 0.0001) with current conventional manual scoring on a retrospective dataset of 79 patients and was found to perform the task faster (average time for automated CAC scoring using a graphics processing unit (GPU) was 3.5 ± 2.1 s vs. 261 s for manual scoring) in a prospective trial of 55 patients with little difference in scores compared to three technologists (mean difference in scores = 3.24, 5.12, and 5.48, respectively). Then using CAC scores from paired gated coronary CT as a reference standard, we trained a deep learning model on our internal data and a cohort from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) study (total training n = 341, Stanford test n = 42, MESA test n = 46) to perform CAC scoring on routine non-gated chest CT exams with validation on external datasets (total n = 303) obtained from four geographically disparate health systems. On identifying patients with any CAC (i.e., CAC ≥ 1), sensitivity and PPV was high across all datasets (ranges: 80–100% and 87–100%, respectively). For CAC ≥ 100 on routine non-gated chest CTs, which is the latest recommended threshold to initiate statin therapy, our model showed sensitivities of 71–94% and positive predictive values in the range of 88–100% across all the sites. Adoption of this model could allow more patients to be screened with CAC scoring, potentially allowing opportunistic early preventive interventions.

A pandemic anniversary: 40 years of HIV/AIDS

A pandemic anniversary: 40 years of HIV/AIDS

Effect of Soil Amendments and Foliar Application of Potassium Silicate on Wheat Plants Grown under Sodicity Conditions

Nowadays, degraded soils reclamation e.g., sodic soils is the main target for Egypt Government to face the great gap between food production and consumption. The high exchangeable sodium on soil colloids is a plant stress factor due to its role in reducing soil aggregates. To face this challenges, two field experiments were carried out aiming at evaluating the impact of soil amendments as main plots i.e. sugar lime mud and agricultural gypsum, and foliar application of potassium silicate at different rates [0.0 (control), 750 and 1500 mg L-1K2SiO3] as sub-plots on wheat plants grown on soil having ESP value of 15.9%. Both soil amendments improved sodic soil properties, where the superior amendment was gypsum followed by sugar lime mud compared to untreated soil, and this improvement reflected on plant performance. The rate of 1500 mg L-1 K2SiO3 possessed the best performance, while the rate of 750 mg L-1K2SiO3 came in the second-order and lately control treatment. Generally, the best performance of wheat plants grown under sodicity condition was realized when plants were treated with gypsum and potassium silicate at rate of 1500 mg L-1, while the lowest performance was recorded when plants were not treated (without soil and foliar applications). The studied materials enhanced the synthesis of chlorophyll in wheat plant tissues, and this may be the reason for increasing the ability to tolerate sodicity. Also, sugar lime mud has a great opportunity to be included in the fertilization programs for degraded soil especially from an economic point of view.