The goal of this project is to describe and understand the organismal composition, structure, and physiology of microbial ecosystems from hypersaline environments. One collection of such ecosystems occurs at North America's largest saltworks, the Exportadora de Sal, in Guerrero Negro, Baja California Sur. There, seawater flows through a series of evaporative basins with an increase in salinity ...

The experiment was conducted on farmer’s field at District Lakki Marwat (NWFP) during Rabi (spring) 2007-08, in order to study the response of wheat to different soil treatments irrigated with poor quality irrigation water. The treatments including control, tillage, gypsum and sulphuric acid were applied before sowing of the wheat crop. The treatments were arranged in a randomized complete bloc...

groundwater is the sole source of accessible resource for agriculture in zeviercherry- kherran plains and water quality often falls in brackish group. in order to determine the source of salinity and hydrochemical processess affecting groundwater environment of the area, 61 groundwater samples were taken for hydrochemical analysis and composite diagrams (two variant diagrams of total concentrat...

Agricultural waste fibers have been found to be suitable as reinforcement in cement-based composites, but studies on oil palm fiber as reinforcement in gypsum-cement wall panels are scarce. A mixture of two equal weights of gypsum and cement, with water-binder ratios of 0.45 and 0.55 were prepared. In each mix a varying percentage of fiber contents of 2%, 3% and 4% by weight of the binders were...

The rate of hydration influences many important physical properties of gypsum. Previous research examined the rate of gypsum hydration and related this to compressive strength and microstructure development using BET specific surface area analysis. The analysis of gypsum porosity in combination with BET surface area and rate of hydration remains to be done. In the present study, mesoporosity is...

objective: previous studies have demonstrated that dental stone casts can be disinfected by replacing 10v% of required water with 5.25% sodium hypochlorite solution. this comparative study evaluated physical properties of dental stone models produced by replacing distilled water with sodium hypochlorite.   methods: in this in-vitro experimental study, a total of 45 dental stone models were prod...

This paper reviews the main methodologies and techniques that have been used to characterize gypsum in soils, especially in gypsiferous soils of semiarid and arid regions and range from the identification of gypsum in soil surveys in the field to the study of gypsum in the laboratory. Many methods of gypsum identification and determination have been developed, each one with its own limitations....

Both theoretical and experimental results on evaluating hidden water in building materials are reported to compare features of optical and microwave heating. Experiments have been performed on a 2 cm-thick reference sample made of gypsum pasteboard which contained voids filled with foamed polyurethane. The obtained results are compared to illustrate that advantages of microwave moisture detecti...

The fractionation of the oxygen isotopes in the water collected by stepwise dehydration of CUS04 -5H20 has been measured for the crystallization temperatures 25, 40 and 50 °C. From X-ray and neutron diffraction studies it is known that three different kinds of water, differing in their binding in the crystal, exist in CuS04 ,5 H20. On the basis of the results reported here it is concluded that ...

Enzymatic changes are often detrimental to quality of low-moisture foods. In the present study, effects of glass transition and water on sucrose inversion in a lactose-sucrose food model were investigated. Amorphous samples were produced by freeze-drying lactose-sucrose (2:1)-invertase (20 mg invertase/49.4 g of carbohydrate) dissolved in distilled water. Sorption isotherms were determined grav...