This study concerns the removal of a trihydrate antibiotic (Amoxicillin) from synthetically contaminated water by adsorption on modified bentonite. The bentonite was modified using hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (HTAB), which turned it from a hydrophilic to a hydrophobic material. The effects of different parameters were studied in batch experiments. These parameters were contact time, solution pH, agitation speed, initial concentration (C0) of the contaminant, and adsorbent dosage. Maximum removal of amoxicillin (93 %) was achieved at contact time = 240 min, pH = 10, agitation speed = 200 rpm, initial concentration = 30 ppm, and adsorbent dosage = 3 g bentonite per 1L of pollutant solution. The characterization of the adsorbent, modi

Development and population expansion have the lion's share of driving up the fuel cost. Biodiesel has considerable attention as a renewable, ecologically friendly and alternative fuel source. In this study, CaO nanocatalyst is produced from mango leaves as a catalysis for the transesterification of waste cooking oil (WCO) to biodiesel. The mango tree is a perennial plant, and its fruit holds significant economic worth due to its abundance of vitamins and minerals. This plant has a wide geographical range and its leaves can be utilized without any negative impact on its growth and yield. An analysis was conducted to determine the calcium content in the fallen leaves, revealing a significant quantity of calcium that holds potential fo

The introduction of concrete damage plasticity material models has significantly improved the accuracy with which the concrete structural elements can be predicted in terms of their structural response. Research into this method's accuracy in analyzing complex concrete forms has been limited. A damage model combined with a plasticity model, based on continuum damage mechanics, is recommended for effectively predicting and simulating concrete behaviour. The damage parameters, such as compressive and tensile damages, can be defined to simulate concrete behavior in a damaged-plasticity model accurately. This research aims to propose an analytical model for assessing concrete compressive damage based on stiffness deterioration. The prop

         This study involves the design of 24 mixtures of fiber reinforced magnetic reactive powder concrete containing nano silica. Tap water was used for 12 of these mixtures, while magnetic water was used for the others. The nano silica (NS) with ratios (1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3) % by weight of cement, were used for all the mixtures. The results have shown that the mixture containing 2.5% NS gives the highest compressive strength at age 7 days. Many different other tests were carried out, the results have shown that the carbon fiber reinforced magnetic reactive powder concrete containing 2.5% NS (CFRMRPCCNS) had higher compressive strength, modulus of rupture, splitting tension, str

The present study focused mainly on the buckling behavior of composite laminated plates subjected to mechanical loads. Mechanical loads are analyzed by experimental analysis, analytical analysis (for laminates without cutouts) and numerical analysis by finite element method (for laminates with and without cutouts) for different type of loads which could be uniform or non-uniform, uniaxial or biaxial. In addition to many design parameters of the laminates such as aspect ratio, thickness ratio, and lamination angle or the parameters of the cutout such as shape, size, position, direction, and radii rounding) which are changed to studytheir effects on the buckling characteristics with various boundary conditions. Levy method of classical lam

Reinforcing asphalt concrete with polyester fibers considered as an active remedy to alleviate the harmful impact of fatigue deterioration. This study covers the investigation of utilizing two shapes of fibers size, 6.35 mm by 3.00 mm and 12.70 mm by 3.00 mm with mutual concentrations equal to 0.25 %, 0.50 % and 0.75 % by weight of mixture. Composition of asphalt mixture consists of different optimum (40-50) asphalt cement content, 12.50 mm nominal aggregate maximum size with limestone dust as a filler. Following the traditional asphalt cement and aggregate tests, three essential test were carried out on mixtures, namely: Marshall test (105 cylindrical specimens), indirect tensile strength test (21 cylindrical specimens)

This research shows the experimental results of the bending moment in a flexible and rigid raft foundation rested on dense sandy soil with different embedded depth throughout 24 tests. A physical model of dimensions (200mm*200mm) and (320) mm in height was constructed with raft foundation of (10) mm thickness for flexible raft and (23) mm for rigid raft made of reinforced concrete. To imitate the seismic excitation shaking table skill was applied, the shaker was adjusted to three frequencies equal to (1Hz,2Hz, and 3Hz) and displacement magnitude of (13) mm, the foundation was located at four different embedment depths (0,0.25B = 50mm,0.5B = 100mm, and B = 200mm), where B is the raft width. Generally, the maximum bending

This paper presents an improved technique on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm. The procedure is applied on Single Machine with Infinite Bus (SMIB) system with power system stabilizer (PSS) at three different loading regimes. The simulations are made by using MATLAB software. The results show that by using Improved Ant Colony Optimization (IACO) the system will give better performance with less number of iterations as it compared with a previous modification on ACO. In addition, the probability of selecting the arc depends on the best ant performance and the evaporation rate.

Background: Oocytes are susceptible to alterations in the various fatty acid contents of follicular fluid (FF), which may influence maturation and embryogenesis. Different fatty acids exert various effects on intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), which needs further studies to uncover the involved mechanisms. Objectives: To assess FF fatty acids in women undergoing ICSI and to correlate them with ICSI parameters, namely the total count of aspirated oocytes, oocyte maturation rate, fertilization rate and percentage of good-quality embryos. Methods: Fifty women undergoing ICSI were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. FF samples were collected during oocyte retrieval and were analyzed for fatty acids using gas chromatography. Fa

Software Defined Networking (SDN) with centralized control provides a global view and achieves efficient network resources management. However, using centralized controllers has several limitations related to scalability and performance, especially with the exponential growth of 5G communication. This paper proposes a novel traffic scheduling algorithm to avoid congestion in the control plane. The Packet-In messages received from different 5G devices are classified into two classes: critical and non-critical 5G communication by adopting Dual-Spike Neural Networks (DSNN) classifier and implementing it on a Virtualized Network Function (VNF). Dual spikes identify each class to increase the reliability of the classification