The Amount and Timing of Foliar Urea Application Effect on Maize and Forage Sorghum Proteins

This study was carried out for investigating the effect of amount and timing of foliar urea in increasing silage yield and protein content of fodder, in a maize field in Neyshabour, Khorasan Razavi Province during 2011 summer crop season. A split plot design with factorial arrangement and three replications were used. Treatments were timing of foliar urea application (a week before tasselling, mid anthesis and early milk stage), urea levels (zero (check), five and 7.5 g.lit-1) and two hybrids of corn (Sc 704) and forage sorghum (speed feed). The results indicated that the concentration of nitrogen had significant effect to increase forage protein and silage yield (correcting by 280 g.kg-1 of dry matter). The highest forage protein concentrations for both crops and silage yield were achieved with 7.5 g.lit-1 of urea application, but the silage yield of sorghum was more than that of corn. The results showed that urea spraying can effectively increase the fodder nitrogen and silage protein, respectively, with the least possible cost, and in this respect it has an important role in providing quality and environmental safe forage for producer and consumer, meanwhile the adverse effects of excessive use of nitrogen fertilizer are reduced

A Particle Model for Prediction of Cement Infiltration of Cancellous Bone in Osteoporotic Bone Augmentation.

PMC3693961Femoroplasty is a potential preventive treatment for osteoporotic hip fractures. It involves augmenting mechanical properties of the femur by injecting Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) bone cement. To reduce the risks involved and maximize the outcome, however, the procedure needs to be carefully planned and executed. An important part of the planning system is predicting infiltration of cement into the porous medium of cancellous bone. We used the method of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to model the flow of PMMA inside porous media. We modified the standard formulation of SPH to incorporate the extreme viscosities associated with bone cement. Darcy creeping flow of fluids through isotropic porous media was simulated and the results were compared with those reported in the literature. Further validation involved injecting PMMA cement inside porous foam blocks - osteoporotic cancellous bone surrogates - and simulating the injections using our proposed SPH model. Millimeter accuracy was obtained in comparing the simulated and actual cement shapes. Also, strong correlations were found between the simulated and the experimental data of spreading distance (R2 = 0.86) and normalized pressure (R2 = 0.90). Results suggest that the proposed model is suitable for use in an osteoporotic femoral augmentation planning framework.JH Libraries Open Access Fun

Newly discovered rock art sites in Balandar, Mashhad province, north-eastern Iran

The site of Pire Mazar Balandar (or PMB001) is located near the village of Balandar in the Khorasan region of north-eastern Iran (33 degrees 0937.64N, 59 degrees 2952E; Figure 1). It consists of an outcrop of volcanic rock on a mountain peak (1532m asl) on the north-eastern side of the Binaloud range, above the city of Mashhad (Figure 2)