Bacteria strain H7, which produces flocculating substances, was isolated from the soil of corn field at the College of Agriculture in Abu-Ghrib/Iraq, and identified as Bacillus subtilis by its biochemical /physiological characteristics. The biochemical analysis of the partially purified bioflocculant revealed that it was a proteoglycan composed of 93.2 % carbohydrate and 6.1 % protein. The effects of bioflocculant dosage, temperature, pH, and different salts on the flocculation activity were evaluated. The maximum flocculation activity was observed at an optimum bioflocculant dosage of 0.2 mL /10 mL (49.6%). The bioflocculant had strong thermal stability within the range of 30-80 °C, and the flocculating activity was over 50 %. The biofloc

In this study, the zinc oxide NPs have been synthesized from the fresh pomegranate peels extract using the precipitation method. The ZnO nanoparticles were produced from the reaction of fresh peels extract with zinc acetate salt which was used as zinc source in the presence of 2 M NaOH. The green synthesized nanoparticles were characterized through X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis diffuse reflection spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and Atomic force microscopy (AFM). The XRD patterns confirm the formation of hexagonal wurtzite phase structure for ZnO synthesized using pomegranate peels extract with average crystalline size of 28 nm. FTIR spectra identify the presence of many active functional groups for the pom

Researchers are increasingly using multimodal biometrics to strengthen the security of biometric applications. In this study, a strong multimodal human identification model was developed to address the growing problem of spoofing attacks in biometric security systems. Through the use of metaheuristic optimization methods, such as the Genetic Algorithm(GA), Ant Colony Optimization(ACO), and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) for feature selection, this unique model incorporates three biometric modalities: face, iris, and fingerprint. Image pre-processing, feature extraction, critical image feature selection, and multibiometric recognition are the four main steps in the workflow of the system. To determine its performance, the model wa

This paper proposes a novel meta-heuristic optimization algorithm called the fine-tuning meta-heuristic algorithm (FTMA) for solving global optimization problems. In this algorithm, the solutions are fine-tuned using the fundamental steps in meta-heuristic optimization, namely, exploration, exploitation, and randomization, in such a way that if one step improves the solution, then it is unnecessary to execute the remaining steps. The performance of the proposed FTMA has been compared with that of five other optimization algorithms over ten benchmark test functions. Nine of them are well-known and already exist in the literature, while the tenth one is proposed by the authors and introduced in this article. One test trial was shown t

Among a variety of approaches introduced in the literature to establish duality theory, Fenchel duality was of great importance in convex analysis and optimization. In this paper we establish some conditions to obtain classical strong Fenchel duality for evenly convex optimization problems defined in infinite dimensional spaces. The objective function of the primal problem is a family of (possible) infinite even convex functions. The strong duality conditions we present are based on the consideration of the epigraphs of the c-conjugate of the dual objective functions and the ε-c-subdifferential of the primal objective functions.

Today, urban Stormwater management is one of the main concerns of municipalities and stakeholders. Drought and water scarcity made rainwater harvesting one of the main steps toward climate change adaptation. Due to the deterioration of the quality of urban runoff and the increase of impermeable urban land use, the treatment of urban runoff is essential. Best Management Practice (BMP) and Low Impact Development (LID) approaches are necessary to combat climate change consequences by improving the quantity and quality of water resources. The application of Bioswales along urban streets and roadways can reduce the stress on water resources, recharge groundwater and prevent groundwater pollution. While Sulaymaniyah City has a

The biosorption of Pb (II), Cd (II), and Hg (II) from simulated aqueous solutions using baker’s yeast biomass was investigated. Batch type experiments were carried out to find the equilibrium isotherm data for each component (single, binary, and ternary), and the adsorption rate constants. Kinetics pseudo-first and second order rate models applied to the adsorption data to estimate the rate constant for each solute, the results showed that the Cd (II), Pb (II), and Hg (II) uptake process followed the pseudo-second order rate model with (R2) 0.963, 0.979, and 0.960 respectively. The equilibrium isotherm data were fitted with five theoretical models. Langmuir model provides the best fitting for the experimental results with (R2) 0.992, 0

Multiple eliminations (de-multiple) are one of seismic processing steps to remove their effects and delineate the correct primary refractors. Using normal move out to flatten primaries is the way to eliminate multiples through transforming these data to frequency-wavenumber domain. The flatten primaries are aligned with zero axis of the frequency-wavenumber domain and any other reflection types (multiples and random noise) are distributed elsewhere. Dip-filter is applied to pass the aligned data and reject others will separate primaries from multiple after transforming the data back from frequency-wavenumber domain to time-distance domain. For that, a suggested name for this technique as normal move out- frequency-wavenumber domain

The removal of boron from aqueous solution was carried out by electrocoagulation (EC) using magnesium electrodes as anode and stainless steel electrodes as cathode. Several operating parameters on the removal efficiency of boron were investigated, such as initial pH, current density, initial boron ion concentration, NaCl concentration, spacing between electrodes, electrode material, and presence of carbonate concentration. The optimum removal efficiency of 91. 5 % was achieved at a current density of 3 mA/cm² and  pH = 7 using (Mg/St. St. ) electrodes, within 45 min of operating time. The concentration of NaCl was o. 1 g/l with a 0.5cm spacing between the electrodes. First and second order rate equation were applied to study adsorp