Date stones were used as precursor for the preparation of activated carbons by chemical
activation with ferric chloride and zinc chloride. The effects of operating conditions represented
by the activation time, activation temperature, and impregnation ratio on the yield and adsorption
capacity towards methylene blue (MB) of prepared activated carbon by ferric chloride activation
(FAC) and zinc chloride activation (ZAC) were studied. For FAC, an optimum conditions of 1.25
h activation time, 700 °C activation temperature, and 1.5 impregnation ratio gave 185.15 mg/g
MB uptake and 47.08 % yield, while for ZAC, 240.77 mg/g MB uptake and 40.46 % yield were
obtained at the optimum conditions of 1.25 h activation time, 500

The effect of irradiation and exposure time of laser light on the fluorescence emission of DCM dye in PMMA polymer contained in the composition mold using different metals have been investigated. It was found that the fluorescence intensity decreases as the exposure time increases and then reaches stabilization at long times. The effect of the incident laser power on fluorescence intensity of DCM dye in PMMA polymer at 10-3 M and 20% mixing ratio, using copper disks of composition molds, has been studied too. It was observed that there is an upward knick in the curve at laser intensity of 19.2 W/cm2, which may be associated with the threshold for amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) or laser action. And at intensity higher than about 88.

Background: Semen contamination is a detrimental factor in decreasing fertility. Seasonal changes may affect the contamination, too. Objectives: This study was designed to detect semen contamination in ovine and caprine during different seasons. Methods: Six fully mature male sheep and goats were subjected to electro-ejaculator collection twice monthly from February 1, 2022, to January 31, 2023 (Spring, February 1, 2022-April 30, 2022; Summer, May 1, 2022, July 31, 2022; Autumn August 1, 2022, October 31, 2022; Winter November 1, 2022, January 31, 2023), for studying the seasonal effect. A total of 288 semen samples were collected from both species (36 samples from each per season). All samples were subjected to bacterial isolatio

This study was carried out to determine the effects of NaCl (0.00, 50, 100, 150, 180 or 200) mM and two different types of mutagens chemical mutagen ethyl methyl sulphonate (EMS) at 0.5% and physical mutagen UV-B irradiation (40 min time exposure), on mitotic division in two Iraqi rice genotypes Amber 33 (A33) and Amber Baghdad (AB). Different concentrations of NaCl were used. Mitotic index (MI %) was decreased significantly by increasing NaCl concentration, however the highest mitotic index was recorded in mutated genotypes with EMS and UV-B. Different abnormal chromosomes were noticed in mutated plants. Results showed high percentage of abnormal chromosomes in EMS mutated genotypes. In addition no significant differences between genotypes

An agricultural waste (walnut shell) was undertaken to remove Cu(II) from aqueous solutions in batch and continuous fluidized bed processes. Walnut shell was found to be effective in batch reaching 75.55% at 20 and 200 rpm, when pH of the solution adjusted to 7. The equilibrium was achieved after 6 h of contacting time. The maximum uptake was 11.94mg/g. The isotherm models indicated that the highest determination coefficient belongs to Langmuir model. Cu (II) uptake process in kinetic rate model followed the pseudo-second-order with determination coefficient of 0.9972. More than 95% of the Cu(II) were adsorbed on the walnut shells within 6 h at optimum agitation speed of 800 rpm. The main functional groups responsible for biosorption of

In this study, a low-cost biosorbent, dead mushroom biomass (DMB) granules, was used for investigating the optimum conditions of Pb(II), Cu(II), and Ni(II) biosorption from aqueous solutions. Various physicochemical parameters, such as initial metal ion concentration, equilibrium time, pH value, agitation speed, particles diameter, and adsorbent dosage, were studied. Five mathematical models describing the biosorption equilibrium and isotherm constants were tested to find the maximum uptake capacities: Langmuir, Freundlich, Redlich-Peterson, Sips, and Khan models. The best fit to the Pb(II) and Ni(II) biosorption results was obtained by Langmuir model with maximum uptake capacities of 44.67 and 29.17 mg/g for these two ions, respectively, w

A crucial area of research in nanotechnology is the formation of environmentally benign nanoparticles. Both unicellular and multicellular play an important role in synthesis nanoparticles through the production of inorganic materials either intracellularly or extracellularly. The agents (pigments, siderophores, cell extracted metabolites and reducing compounds) were used to prepare silver nanparticles with different sizes and shapes. The color variations (dark yellow, slightly dark yellow and golden yellow) arising from changes in the composition, size, and shape of nanoparticles, surrounding medium can be monitored using UV-visible spectrophotometer. These effects are due to the phenomena called surface plasmon resonance. The silver nanopa

Malaria is a curative disease, with therapeutics available for patients, such as drugs that can prevent future malaria infections in countries vulnerable to malaria. Though, there is no effective malaria vaccine until now, although it is an interesting research area in medicine. Local descriptors of blood smear image are exploited in this paper to solve parasitized malaria infection detection problem. Swarm intelligence is used to separate the red blood cells from the background of the blood slide image in adaptive manner. After that, the effective corner points are detected and localized using Harris corner detection method. Two types of local descriptors are generated from the local regions of the effective corners which are Gabor based f

<span>One of the main difficulties facing the certified documents documentary archiving system is checking the stamps system, but, that stamps may be contains complex background and surrounded by unwanted data. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to isolate background and to remove noise that may be surrounded stamp. Our proposed method comprises of four phases, firstly, we apply k-means algorithm for clustering stamp image into a number of clusters and merged them using ISODATA algorithm. Secondly, we compute mean and standard deviation for each remaining cluster to isolate background cluster from stamp cluster. Thirdly, a region growing algorithm is applied to segment the image and then choosing the connected regi