Vol. 2 Issue 1
M.F.S. Tawfik, K.T. Awadallah and M.M.H. Abdella
The population levels of major insect pests and their associated entomophagous insects were investigates in four localities, Cairo, Alexandria, Beni-Suef and Fayoum during the period from December 1979 to November 1980. Dominance of certain species in different localities seems to vary due to the prevailing climatic conditions and the interactions between various insect species inhabiting the same habitat. The occurrence of population peaks also varied in different localities, as did the prominent species in each locality.
A.M.A. Ismail
Wheat (Triticum aestivum cv. Condore) was given three irrigation treatments and a split-dose of urea during the winter of 1980-1981 to examine some of the yield components and to estimate proline accumulation through the effects of water stress and nitrogen status of the tissue.
Height of the plant was measured, tiller number per plant was counted and free-proline was determined during the various stages of the crop growth. Under nitrogen deficiency and water stress, proline accumulation was impaired in wheat leaves. Prokine accumulation was rapid under reasonable nitrogen levels and water stress. The results indicate that proline accumulation in wheat is correlated with the nitrogen status of the leaf tissue. This should be taken into account in breeding programs where free-proline accumulation is used to indicate drought resistance.
S.M. Hafez, A.I. Radwan, S.I. Bekairi and A.A. Al-Mukayel
The agar gel double diffusion technique was used to test for bluetongue precipitating antibody in serum samples collected from ruminants in Saudi Arabia. Of 560 sheep serum samples, 61 goat serum samples, 112 cattle serum samples and 3 camel serum samples from 6 different localities in the Kingdom, 336 (60%), 26 (43%), 20 (18%) and 2% (67%) samples, respectively, contained bluetongue antibody. This is the first report on the occurrence of bluetongue in Saudi Arabia.
Minoru Nagashima, Masaki Azuma, Sadao Noguchi and Keiichi Inuzuka
Growing cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae immobilized in calcium alginate gel beads was employed in fluidized-bed reactors for continuous ethanol production from cane molasses and various sugar sources.
Some improvements were also made against microbial contamination and for the maintenance of yeast viability for a stable long run operation.
A pilot plant of 4 KL total column volume was constructed and it was affirmed that 8.5 v/v% alcohol was constantly produced from diluted cane molasses for over three months.
The productivity of this process was estimated at 0.6 KL ethanol/KL -fermentor, day with 95% of conversion yield against theoretical value.
Adnan Nouh, Abobakr Sultan and Roshdi Tolba
An algorithm to select an optimum set of density features for the Arabic character set is developed and implemented. The method involves generation of all possible features by means of position-by-position matching between characters. The feature selected, each have a correlation coefficient greater than a certain threshold.
The obtained optimum feature set is utilized in the classification stage employing a sequential tree search technique. Computational results are presented and discussed.
Nabil F. Ismael
Soil stabilization has come into increasing use due to its economic advantage and because of the scarcity of good natural aggregates. Cement stabilization of Kuwaiti soils is examined herein by means of an extensive laboratory testing program. The amount of cement used varied from 2% to 10% to improve the stability, strength and durability of surface soils. The results are encouraging and indicate the possible use of cemented soils in many application, such as road construction, embankment protection, pipe bedding, and conventional backfills.