Maize is negatively affected by many environmental factors during growth, with drought stress being one of the most common causes for reduction in maize yield world-wide. There is wide variation in stand establishment for various maize cultivars to water deficit condition, such as occur in in arid and semiarid regions of the world. An experiment was carried out to evaluate five cultivars of maize viz; EV-1097, Agaiti-2002, Sawaan-3, Islamabad Gold and EV-1098 for tolerance to water deficit based on their cell wall plasticity characteristics. The crop was sown in pots; each treatment consisted of five pots having three plants each, and each pot was watered uniformly up to soil capacity from germination to the three leaf stage as required. Then, the water supply was reduced to half soil capacity level for one week, and then to one-third capacity for the coming two weeks. After 35 days, irrigation was stopped for one week. After one week without water, the plants showed symptoms of drought stress, at which time data was recorded on leaf growth rate, chlorophyll content, leaf water potential, protein content, proline content, relative water content, specific leaf weight, and sugar content. Control plants were maintained at full soil capacity. The experiment was laid out by using Completely Randomized Design with three replications and five treatments (cultivars). The response of the five cultivars examined under these water deficit stress treatments differed dramatically. Cultivars EV-1097 and Agaiti-2002 were amongst the best performers, showing maximum cell wall plasticity, having the highest leaf growth rate, proline, protein, sugar and relative water contents, as well as the highest specific leaf weight, leaf water potential, and chlorophyll content when compared with other cultivars. EV-1097 and Agaiti-2002 were thus the most tolerant cultivars to these water deficit treatments. The Islamabad gold and EV-1098 cultivars were the least tolerant to water stress conditions.

Background: The inappropriate endodontic treatment is the single most frequent cause for tooth extractions. The final goal of the endodontic treatment and the re-treatment (following inappropriate endodontic treatment) is retaining the functionality of the tooth. So far, the most promising materials in these indications were the calcium-silicate cements. \nMethod: Biodentinetm, a new dental biomaterial based on calcium-silicate technology, with excellent handling characteristics and biocompatibility, has been used in patients with complications during the endodontic therapy, traumatic injuries and as a dentin substitute for restorations in complex situations. \nResults: The clinical cases demonstrated the excellent healing potential after the treatment with Biodentinetm. \nConclusions: The bio-silicate technology is highly promising, mostly due to its chemical properties and easy clinical manipulation. The short working time and the high mechanical strength makes Biodentinetm a material with easy handling, highly biocompatible and with wide range of indications (such as endodontic procedures and as a dentin substitute in restorations).

Character Recognition (CR) has been an active area of research and due to its diverse applicable environment it continues to be a challenging research topic in the handwritten recognition process. Feature extraction plays an important role in different classification based problems such as face recognition, signature verification, optical character recognition (OCR) etc. Different feature extraction methods are designed for different representations of the characters. In this paper a comparative analysis for feature extraction using principal component analysis (PCA) and Eigen feature regularization and extraction (ERE) is proposed. The ERE algorithm reduce the occurrence of false detection. Back propagation neural network is combined with ERE features for recognition of characters. The proposed algorithm has been successfully implemented and has the added advantage of obtaining the extraction and recognition result the same time

In the introduction of this paper some definitions of the fiscal pressure are highlighted, also known as tax rate or tax level, as well as some means to determine it at the level of the country, economic entity or individual. In the following lines, a case study is presented on determining the tax pressure to a commercial company between 2008 - 2012. The conclusions have focused on highlighting the influence that the tax pressure may have on the economic entity’s financial decisions.

More than 2 million tons of agricultural wastes are produced annually in\nMalaysia. These agricultural wastes provide feedstock for biochar production, which\ncontributes insignificant net carbon dioxide to the atmosphere after soil incorporation.\nThree kinds of primary biochar were used in this study, namely, empty fruit bunch\nbiochar (EFB), wood biochar (WB), and rice husk biochar (RHB). EFB and WB were\nproduced by slow pyrolysis, whereas RHB was produced by gasification. This study\naimed to investigate the influence of slow pyrolysis and gasification methods on\nbiochar chemical characteristics and short-term soil stability. Results showed that the\nkinetic parameters of C mineralization, which was calculated by fitting the three-pool\nkinetic model to evolved CO2–C under field conditions, suggested a tri-phasic Cmineralization\nprocess (labile, unstable, and recalcitrance carbon). Our estimates\nreflected the existence of a very labile C fraction in RHB with a very small decay\nconstant K3. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction showed the\nthree phase transitions of the biochars from the microcrystalline C of the labile\nfraction to the largely amorphous intermediate C of the unstable fraction and\nformation of turbostratic crystallite C in the recalcitrant fraction. We concluded that\nEFB and WB decomposed faster than RHB. Therefore, RHB was a suitable option for\nC sequestration in soil.