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The present work is an attempt to create a biosurfactant producing consortia on the bases of initial rhizospheric community of lettuce plant (Lactuca sativa). To obtain consortia, 47 strains from the rhizosphere were isolated and checked upon their ability to produce biosurfactants. The ability of the isolates to produce biosurfactants was analyzed on the basis of their ability to emulsify crude oil (E24 index). The isolates with the highest E24 were Bacillus. oryzaecorticis (80%), B. simplex (65%), Paenibacillus ...

Current space activities are especially directed to explore the potential of Mars to have hosted life as well as directed to find future exploration odds of Mars by human beings. In this context scientific advance and newest technology infrastructure, NEXT GEN TECH, is nowadays used and applied on Mars. Current NASA mission can be mentioned, which represents a newly planned exploration of Mars having the goal to succeed in providing scientific information with the support of several rovers. Sent rovers to Mars mus...

The industrial cultivation of American cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon Aiton) in Latvia was started during last 20 years with total plantings of more than 125 ha today. As a native wetland plant, commonly cranberries grows on poor, acid soils and are characterized as nutrients low requiring crop, however, balanced plant nutrition is vitally important to realize the full potential of cranberries as crop, to ensure adequate growth and yield production. Previous results obtained by authors from different cranberry p...

Noise is a "by-product of technological metabolism", omnipresent in most workplaces, representing one of the discomfort factors for personnel working in the presence of this noxae. Knowledge of risks generated by exposure to noise specific to each activity carried out, allow quantification of the effects on workers such as: masking, auditory fatigue, sound trauma, acute hypoacusis, professional deafness. Accidental exposure to noise leads to auditory fatigue, which is a transient and reversible phenomenon, but pro...

A known and often used method of insulation is represented by soundproof sponge, having the role of sound absorption and improvement of acoustics. The insulating sponge is used in recording studios, Radio TV studios, music rehearsal rooms, for upholstering acoustic enclosures having the role of acoustic correction. The aim of the study is to improve acoustic characteristics of a room that was originally used as an office and is now used as a music rehearsal room and recording studio, making determinations of noise...

Research Object and Relevance. Inclinometer measurements occupy an important place in geotechnical monitoring of hydraulic structures. Borehole inclinometers are used on tailings dams - they allow you to determine horizontal displacements, shifts, curvature of the casing pipe throughout its entire depth. An important part of the processing of initial data is the identification of various systematic errors. The authors of the article faced the problem of interpreting the displacements at the tailings dam of The Erd...

Forest restoration programmes take place globally and lay a pivotal role in addressing climate change and biodiversity loss. Often restoration programmes are based on simple plantation schemes, evenly planting trees that later on might contribute to economic activity. This, however, does not seem to be sufficient for supporting biodiversity. Recent research suggests that successful restorations should match original ecological patterns in any particular landscape, assuming that severe erosion and changing soil con...

Infostructures element increased in demand last forty years, these elements provide increasing in the resistance of structures and service age. Due to the difficulty of studying the behavior of parts that embedded in soil special for the anchor plate. A numerical study was adopted to study the behavior of anchor plate inside the soil to see the deformations and the stress that deform inside the soil, also the reaction of soil companion under the effect of this loads. Abaqus is a complete program used to solve the ...

Avoiding thermal bridges in the building envelope is one of the key elements for the reduction of energy consumption in buildings. Numerical calculations of heat flux through the joints of building structures are becoming very relevant in the past years due to the EU requirements for nearly zero energy buildings. The most problematic typically is windows installation perimeter, where thanks to fastenings of the frame to the loadbearing structure, linear thermal bridge forms. The use of numerical calculation of tem...

The significant increase in the price of energy resources leads today's society not only to a reconsideration of energy conservation policies but also to the encouragement of architects, builders, and building owners to use thermal insulation and exterior wall finishing systems. The design of thermal insulation for facades is a constructive decision, in which the layer with thermal insulation properties is fixed on the load-bearing side of the walls, with the help of adhesives and/or by mechanical means, followed ...

Plastic in the environment poses significant problems for the present, as well as for future generations. The consequences and the exposure of living organisms to plastic pollution are not yet fully understand. The risks to health, environment and climate, due to the ubiquity and persistence of plastic are of great interest. The current study analyzes the perception of the Romanians regarding plastic pollution, in order to determine any pro-recycling behaviour of the local people and to recommend specific actions ...

The evolution of technology in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has led to the miniaturization of the equipment on board these aircraft. The most used equipment mounted on a UAV is still the video sensor, with the help of which the video image from the aerial vehicle can be processed for dedicated applications (facility inspection, surveying and mapping, operational oversight, traffic control, etc.). In this paper, we present the prototyping of a three-axis gimbal using the direct drive technology to r...

A detailed study of the herb layer species of forest ecosystems that are anthropogenically affected makes it possible to predict the successive changes and model the development of plant communities in particular areas. The study results of grassland species populations contribute to the restoration and preservation of unique groups that are part of forest ecosystems. Our research deals with understanding the mechanisms of adaptations that exist at the population level of the organization against the background of...

The development of sustainable ecosystem services worldwide is one of the priority issues in the context of environmental protection. Sustainable use of ecosystem services ensures the conservation of natural resources for future generations. In the cold climate of the lowland river, there is a highly seasonal hydrological regime affecting the use of ecosystem services. Biodiversity in flood meadows depends directly on seasonal variations in water levels. Balanced hydro generation and water regulation can pose risk...

As a consequence of climate change, in some regions, more intense rain showers go hand in hand with longer dry periods. The subsequent more and more severe droughts can have devastating effects on many economic and social sectors. Therefore, it is necessary to be able to predict and assess the consequences of these droughts on a local scale, in order to develop policies to cope. Drought assessment needs a lot of detailed and accurate input-data, such as land use, land cover, soil moisture, vegetation, evapotranspi...

This study presents a new approach to optimize the habitat mapping process of the Posidonia oceanica algae on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea. Mapping of underwater and coastal habitats in the Adriatic Sea, until now, was conducted by direct methods (diving, drop-down camera, etc.) in combination with indirect modelling, which in the majority of cases results in data heterogeneity. The mentioned approach has proven unreliable, expensive, and only informative. Modern indirect, remote sensing methods enable an an...

Estradiol, also designed as 17- ? -estradiol, belongs to the pharmaceutical class of steroid estrogens and was included in the -Watch List- since 2013 the Directive 2013/39/EU due to its potential risk to human health and environment. The low removal efficiency of estrogens by the conventional wastewater treatment plants, becomes a major source of their release into different aquatic matrices. This work presents the optimization of an analytical methodology based on solid phase extraction and high-performance liqu...

The most significant challenges of organic farming are the fragmentation of the sector, unstable product supply and sales opportunities, as well as the lack of knowledge of how to manage agricultural production agronomically and economically effective. The predominant form of agricultural enterprises in Latvia is small and medium-sized farms. Thus, cooperation is an effective solution so that farmers can maintain the form of a family business and achieve an appropriate economic market, which would contribute to th...

Psychosocial risks are defined by the International Labor Organization in terms of interactions between job content, work organization and management, and other environmental and organizational conditions, on one hand, and employee conditions, skills, and needs, on the other. Thus, psychosocial risks refer to those interactions that prove to have a dangerous influence on employees' health through their perceptions and experience. Long-term involvement in stressful work situations can lead to onset of burnout syndr...

Growing greenhouse gas emissions are a primary cause of global warming and climate change, with transportation accounting for the largest proportion. Many countries have started to develop strategies to promote the development of sustainable transport technologies. In terms of fossil fuel independence and reducing carbon emissions, electric vehicles (EVs) are a highly developed and efficient solution with growing popularity. This study looks at the major socio-economic and perception-related obstacles to the much ...

The global warming and climate change caused by the anthropogenic activities is expected to increase. To address these issues, one key solution is the utilization of renewable materials such as biomass. Biochar, made from biomass materials is seen as a potential option to replace the fossil fuel-based reductants. Pyrolysis is the most common way of producing biochar. However, the physicochemical properties of biochar are significantly influenced by virgin biomass characteristics and the pyrolysis condition such as...

The threat caused by the use of generic carbonaceous material for carbothermic reduction to globe has increased. Millions are being invested to protect the environment due to the global warming. A new generation of reductants is urgently sought to mitigate the threat. Biochars improvement for different usages is currently looked at. One of the ways to produce biochar is pyrolysis. The temperature and type of atmosphere in the furnace used play an important role on the quality of biochar produced. The current paper...

The treatment of the Pasig River water using ultrafiltration is a promising solution that may help address issues on public water quality and availability around Metro Manila, Philippines. To improve the treatment performance, ultrafiltration can be applied with coagulation and adsorption. In this study, the effectiveness of ultrafiltration in treating the Pasig River water with dual coagulation and adsorption was investigated by determining the percent removal of TDS, turbidity, Escherichia coli (E. coli), nitrat...

Chicken manure is one of the most wide spread waste worldwide. One of its hazardous properties is contamination with live pathogens or pathogens- spores. Being introduced into soil for fertilization, fresh, cured or treated manure can cause soil contamination with those pathogens. Further, transmission of the pathogens through soil and plant tissues to human or animal food is possible. The objective of the present work was to reveal the level of pathogenic contamination of wheat grains cultivated on soil that was ...

The study of ultra-low frequency (ULF) waves and geomagnetic pulsations plays an important role in better understanding the mechanisms of their generation and spread in the magnetosphere and on the ground. The magnetospheric ULF waves, which provide useful information about the conditions in the solar wind and in the magnetosphere, can be detected on the ground by different types of magnetometers and recorded as geomagnetic pulsations - continuous and irregular. This paper aims to study the characteristics of Pc5 ...

The last decade has been characterized by an increased frequency of climatic anomalies and their amplitude. These anomalies affect the productivity of crops and orchards, which is directly dependent on agro-meteorological conditions. The registered tendencies to change the hydrothermal conditions in the different regions of the country sometimes are a risk factor for their productivity, especially in the initial phenological stages of the development of the fruit trees. Bud dormancy on the fruit trees from the tem...

Aromatic plants play an important role in economic, social, medical, cultural and ecological aspects all over the world. The cultivation and processing of vegetable raw materials of plants containing essential oils with the help of green technologies are one the topical issues. The article discusses the results of the introduction and cultivation of an important aromatic plant in the Batumi Botanical Garden (Georgia) by green technologies. Based on the studies, Cumin passes the full cycle of growth and flowering i...

LiDAR technology expands the possibilities for forest inventory using aerial and terrestrial scanning. A technological scheme for terrestrial personal laser scanning (PLS) has been developed in order to extract numerical tree parameters. The aim of the paper is to determine the characteristics of individual trees and average taxation indicators of forest stands via terrestrial PLS method. The PLS system includes Sensor Ouster OS1-16, mounted on a folding monopod and mini PC for control and recording of primary raw...

The quality and quantity of delta lakes- sediment depend on fluvial input and in-situ bio-geo-chemical processes. The present study investigates the quality of lacustrine sediments collected from two lakes - Tataru and Merhei, situated in different hydrodynamic environments within the Danube Delta, Romania, but both connected to fluvial input of water and sediment of the Danube. The following physical and chemical analyses have been carried out on several lake-bottom sediment samples: the main lithological compone...

Gypsum-based materials and products currently deserve special attention from specialists in many industries. They are distinguished by high environmental friendliness, manufacturability and safety. The construction industry is showing additional interest in their increased comfort, reduced sound insulation and thermal insulation. Obtaining crystallization structures directly from gypsum dihydrate using a non-hydration hardening scheme competes with many modern technological approaches. In the production of non-fir...

Georgia is distinguished by diverse of ecosystem parameters. Accordingly, unique phylogenetic resource is the richest and most interesting in its composition, the unique species of medicinal, aromatic, dye, spicy and poisonous or useful plants are spread here, which are not found anywhere else. At the same time, ethnobotanical skills of their sustainable use are interesting. Origanum vulgare, one of the widely used of medicinal, aromatic, spicy and dye plants, is a perennial herbaceous plant from the Labiatae fami...

Pigments have important applications in various fields, such as colorants in food, cosmetic or textile industries and in biomedical applications. Dyes, especially azo dyes contained in wastewaters released from textile, pigment, and leather industries, are entering into natural waterbodies. Nonconventional biomass-based sorbents are the greatest attractive alternatives because of their low cost, sustainability, availability, and eco-friendly. In this work we use biomass produced from Black Soldier Fly exuviae for ...

The oversupply of water during the floods and the low soil surface levels determine the difficult ecological, economic, and demographic conditions. It then leads to using agricultural land of different types and intensities and various methods of regulating the water regime: summer polders. Human activity has significantly impacted the ecological processes of the floodplains of the Svete floodplain with extensive amelioration works that have significantly altered the appearance of a natural park. The total area of...

In this paper were obtained waste/polymeric nanocomposites - polyamide waste (PAW) and polystyrene (PS), compatibilized with maleic anhydride grafted polystyrene, and reinforced with carbon nanofibers (CF). PolyamideWaste / polystyrene (PAW / PS) composites are studied because both components are relatively cheap, with beneficial properties, and can be processed by injection. Compatibility of polymer and waste compounds can be achieved by adding a grafted copolymer, the segments of which have physical or chemical ...

The main purpose of the research was to create a comprehensive methodology to assess, predict and prevent the consequences of the negative impact of water-reservoirs on the environment, provide the safety of population and infrastructure; to find a way allowing jointly realize the interests of hydropower and coast protection. To achieve this goal, the following methods were used: full-scale experiment, field-expedition surveys on operating reservoirs, informational analysis, mathematical methods of least squares, ...

Cadastral surveying of land is the determination, establishment, and survey of the legal boundaries of a land unit. Cadastral surveying of land is performed that it is necessary to divide a unit of land, merge land units or rearrange the boundaries, if it is necessary to update the situation or encumbrance plan. In the process of cadastral surveying of land, an area plan is prepared. Sometimes the terrain situation is complicated, and it is difficult for a surveyor to access the object. When the terrain situation ...

ADI (Austempered Ductile Iron) - a bainitic ductile iron in which the resulting structure is obtained by the isothermal decay of austenite in the bainite region is currently a very promising material, which has a very wide application in various industries. It is characterized by a particularly favorable combination of strength and ductility, which exceeds the properties of heat-treated steels in the strength range of 800 - 1500 MPa. Its production is problematic because the ferritic or ferritic-pearlitic SGI (sph...

Environmental education is one of the cross-cutting topics in the school system of the Slovak Republic. Cross-cutting topics have a globally and socially significant character, and schools must educate students about these topics either by implementing them into the content of compulsory subjects (e.g. language teaching, mathematics, history...), or by cross-cutting topics can also be taught as separate subjects. Environmental education focuses primarily on how to teach students a positive approach to the environm...

The inhabitants produce the sump waters and accumulate temporarily in the sumps. This is sewage that must be treated before it is discharged to surface waters. Slovak legislation does not allow the discharge of such waters into the soil. The possibilities of sump water treatment are given by the water management equipment of the given locality where sewage water is produced. The most common treatment method is transported at municipal wastewater treatment plants, which are, however, largely congested. In many case...

Recently, hydrogen is often considered as one of the prospective clean energy carriers. However, the traditional hydrogen production methods also produce significant amounts of greenhouse gases or too expensive to be industrial scaled. In situ hydrogen generation in hydrocarbon-containing reservoirs can be one of the promising ways for low-carbon hydrogen production. However, the conversion of hydrocarbons into hydrogen under the hydrocarbon reservoirs conditions has practically not been studied. This work reports...

In a climate change scenario, natural disasters as wildfires and their consequences are expected to increase. Besides the loss of vegetation, wildfires have severe effects over mountain environments, frequently affecting slope stability and eventually provoking further economic losses and casualties. The risen probability of flash flooding and debris flow is recognized to depend on a modification of the soil hydrological properties, in particular of the soil infiltration capacity, in burnt terrains. Past studies i...

The significant development of single-board computers today can create many different threats to information security. These devices open up new opportunities for attackers, as they allow them to find new ways to carry out attacks. Since SBCs are often small in physical size, but have the processing power to run full Linux distributions, combined with a variety of different external interfaces, this allows you to create devices that can listen to sound, photo and video recording, and intercept network traffic. Met...

Landfill and dump remediation and waste recovery are often needed as circular economy approach is more and more demanding. Complicated solutions are needed to conserve the landfill space as well as overall reduction of the amount of landfilled material is not an easy task because of the different content of contaminants. Primitive soil excavating and transporting to hazardous waste landfills is not the best solution anymore. Series of experiments using landfill mined fine fraction of waste considering complex form...

Climate change is the most pronounced in the last thirty years. In the world, but also in Slovakia, there are extreme temperatures and frequent periods of drought alternating with torrential precipitation. Neither of these two options is suitable for the country. The aim of this article was to determine the distribution of precipitation in the period 1991- 2020. Using the Mann-Kendall trend analysis, it was determined a statistically significant increase or decrease in precipitation in individual months of the yea...

The development of areas of bio-economy, which replace fossil fuels with bioresources in production and the provision of services, is important in many countries. Therefore, in 2017, the government approved the Latvian Bioeconomy Strategy 2030, which provides for four key integrated groups and one complementary group of measures to implement this strategy. As five years have passed since the strategy was approved in Latvia, it is necessary to assess the progress of its implementation. Therefore, the aim of the pre...

Climate modifications are more and more visible nowadays. Many specialists consider human activities one of the most probable sources of this situation. Other aspects to consider are the magnitude and period in which these will produce effects. It is important to create educational premises for the young generation to limit, if not eliminate, all the possible harmful actions on the environment. The aim of the study was established considering these aspects. It is useful to determine the youth's knowledge regarding...

This paper presents the preliminary results obtained for the determination of some nutritional parameters of homemade chocolate fortified with nettle powder (NP) obtained from young nettle leaves grown in spontaneous flora, in pollution-free areas. 4 types of homemade chocolate with the addition of 2.5 - 10 % NP and a control chocolate (without the addition of NP) were prepared. Samples were analyzed from the proximate composition and mineral content point of view. The obtained preliminary results show that the ch...

In recent years, with the rise of a growing economic and technological interest in lithium mineral resources, there has been a parallel concern, on the part of some local populations and even national environmental groups, for a hypothetical contamination problem that this type of exploitations may cause on the quality of groundwater. Thus, the present study was based on an evaluation of an open-pit quarry, in the socalled Alijo quarry, located in the North of Portugal, in the parish of Canedo, Ribeira de Pena mun...

DETEX Electronic Detonator made by Kirlioglu consists of an electronic circuit with communication and microprocessor and wire bridge resistance coated with explosive material. DETEX Electronic Detonator, which identity information, delay information, charge, discharge and all functions are controlled digitally, is a system consisting of all electronic circuit elements. The system consists of a communication circuit, a master control circuit with a microprocessor, a controlled charge, a discharge and an ignition ci...

Procedural techniques are used to generate 3D models, textures, images, and effects. Procedural modelling is widely used in areas such as architecture, archeology, and video games, and is based on a series of rules and algorithms. Computer-generated architecture (CGA) is a set of rules that software uses to automatically generate models. This paper describes the process of creating three models using CGA rules and procedural modelling. The models were created using the free Blender software and the geometry nodes ...