An apparatus for the retention of moisture at or near the root system of a plant or group of plants is provided. A shaft is coupled to the handle. Each cluster has a separate scheduling queue wherein the tasks for any one cluster have been selected to maximize cache memory hits by affinity scheduling. Hot investment casting may be used to form items from the alloys, which may then be shaped or polished to a final form. The method includes calculating spatial similarities between the current block and the plurality of neighboring partitions around the current block, selecting at least one of the neighboring partitions based on the calculated spatial similarities, and estimating a motion vector of the selected partition as the motion vector of the current block. by the document image reading device, that has an interior of the internal paper ejection unit with a larger space, has satisfactory operability for removing the recording medium, has improved maintenance characteristics, for example, unit replacement and adjustment, andor that has improved external product quality.