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Copyright of Journal of Engineering (17264073) is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Halophytes are naturally salt-tolerant plants with immense potential to become alternate crops for saline lands. While their economic benefits have gained increasing attention, often, the roles of halophytes in addressing different climate change-related issues are overlooked. Halophytes can be a renewable resource for clean 'carbon-neutral' energy by serving as biofuel or biogas feedstock, help in the sequestration of rising CO2 as well as the phytoremediation of various pollutants, can be a good source of food and fodder thereby help in achieving food security in arid/saline areas, can help in protection and biodiversity conservation in various ecosystems, and can provide livelihood to poor local communities inhabiting barren lands. This review also attempts to highlight various usages of halophytes in connection with a global change perspective. However, there are still many challenges such as economic viability, customer preferences, environmental impacts, and scale-up challenges, which need further research, innovation, effective policies, and collaboration. In general, this review provides a synthesis of various biological, environmental, and socioeconomic aspects of halophytes to fully exploit the potential of halophytes for human welfare and combating global climate changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fuzzy sets (FSs) with belief and plausibility measures in Dempster-Shafer theory (DST) are recognized as different methodology to model imperfect, uncertain, and vague information more accurately than probability. Various generalizations of DST to FSs are suggested in the numerous literatures but the generalization of DST to Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PFSs) has not yet been considered so far. In this paper, we first suggest an intuitive and simple way to develop a generalization of DST to PFSs with the characterization of belief function in terms of membership function and plausibility function in terms of 1-nonmemberhip function respectively. We give the interpretation of belief and plausibility on PFSs and then construct belief-plausibility intervals (BPIs) of PFSs. On the basis of suggested BPIs, we use Hausdorff distance to describe the distance between two BPIs and then construct several similarity measures in the generalized context of DST to PFSs. By utilizing the method of VIekriterijumsko KOmpromisno Rangiranje (VIKOR), the suggested belief and plausibility measures on PFSs in the framework of DST enable us to develop a belief-plausibility VIKOR (BP-VIKOR) to manage multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) problems related to daily life settings. Numerical analysis with examples are given to show the suggested method is reasonable, and suitable in the environment of PFSs in the context of generalization of DST. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Haloxylon stocksii is a succulent halophyte with high potential to become edible-oil and medicinal crop for the arid-saline lands. Studies about germination ecology and mechanisms of salinity tolerance during vegetative stage of this plant exist. However, information about longevity and biochemical changes in H. stocksii seeds during storage is absent. This study thus examined longevity, and physio-chemical attributes of the H. stocksii seeds under different storage conditions. Fresh seeds were non-dormant with ∼96% germination in water. Storage of seeds for four months had little effect on their germination in most conditions. However, storage for 8 or 12 months caused a complete germination inhibition in laboratory and field respectively. Seed moisture increased with the storage time and was positively correlated with mortality. Antioxidant activity of the seeds increased with time in all conditions, which however was inadequate to prevent oxidative damage as hydrogen peroxide and lipid peroxidation levels increased, especially with >4 months of storage. Hence, these data indicate the short longevity of the H. stocksii seeds resulting from moisture-induced oxidative damages during storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among many tested enzymes, lipase was found to be the one most affected by schistosomiasis in human serum, where it is increased eightfold. Arylsulfatases A and B and aspartyl protease displayed a significant decrease in the serum, while other enzymes showed a significant increase. α-Amylase and Leucine aminopeptidase were significantly increased and arylsulfatase B showed a significant decrease. Arylsulfatase B from a patient's leucocytes did not show either changed kinetic behaviour or temperature-dependent conformational changes. These results indicate that the diminished activity of this enzyme may be attributed to an opposing mechanism of regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]