The consumption of fresh fruits has increased nowadays due to the lifestyle of the consumers. Maintaining the quality and nutritional value of cut fruits during storage is difficult compared to whole fruits. Deterioration of internal and external quality usually occurs in freshly harvested fruits. It is necessary to use different techniques to maintain the quality and increase the shelf life of the freshly cut product. This research studied the effect of treating apple slices with cold plasma once and with filtered water again on quality characteristics (hardness, moisture content, sugar content, carbohydrate content, and color) after being stored for five days. The best treatment was determined using two different pressures of the plasma jet (1 and 5 atm) and two different immersion times (3 and 6 minutes). It was verified the superiority of cold plasma treatment at 5 atm and 3 minutes immersion time in all studied traits, while treatment with filtered water and 6 minutes immersion time was superior concerning the moisture content of apple slices. There is an inverse relationship between L* and a direct relationship between the a* and b* values with the storage time. Therefore, the use of cold plasma treatment is promising in storing cut fruits, extending their shelf life, and improving their quality and safety, which provides fresh fruits.
Radiation treatment has long been the conventional approach for treating nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) tumors due to its anatomic features, biological characteristics, and radiosensitivity. The most common treatment for nasopharyngeal carcinoma is radiotherapy. This study aimed to assess the better quality of radiotherapy treatment techniques using intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) and volumetric-modulated arc therapy (VMAT). The VMAT and IMRT are comparative techniques. Forty patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma and forwarded for radiotherapy were treated with both advanced techniques, IMRT and VMAT, using eclipse software from Varian. The x-ray energy was set at 6 MV. The total prescribed dose was 70 Gy. The results show that the
... Show MoreThis paper proposes a neuro-fuzzy system to model β-glucosidase activity based on the reaction’s pH level and temperature. The developed fuzzy inference system includes two input variables (pH level and temperature) and one output (enzyme activity). The multi-input fuzzy inference system was developed in two stages: first, developing a single input-single output fuzzy inference system for each input variable (pH, temperature) separately, using the robust adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) approach. The neural network learning techniques were used to tune the membership functions based on previously published experimental data for β-glucosidase. Second, each input’s optimized membership functions from the ANF
... Show MoreSocial protection meets different aspects of the needs of vulnerable groups, such as the economic, health, education, and family relations and ties in the Iraqi society. This is because vulnerable groups have suffered from social and economic influences that have negative implications on the social reality as a whole. Poverty is a case in point, which paved the way to frequent setbacks that have led to social structure instability. Accordingly, the present study aims to examine the role and effect of the Net of Social Protection Program in equally distributing social protection to curb or mitigate any negative consequnces that might happen to the poor segments and vulnerable people, who are succeptible to shocks, such as: the orphans, un
... Show MoreThe aim of this study was to measure the effectiveness of a proposed program to develop the creative abilities of the students of Tabuk University and its impact on the creative output of the NEOM project. The sample of the study consisted of (50) university students divided into two groups: an experimental group of 25 students who receive the proposed training program, and control group of (25) students.
To achieve these objectives, the researcher designed and developed tools to collect the required data, which were verified their validity and reliability.
The descriptive statistics of mean, standard deviations, correlation coefficient, T test for the associated sample were used in the analysis of the results of th
... Show MoreIn the last years, the self-balancing platform has become one of the most common candidates to use in many applications such as flight, biomedical fields, industry. This paper introduced the simulated model of a proposed self-balancing platform that described the self–balancing attitude in (X-axis, Y-axis, or both axis) under the influence of road disturbance. To simulate the self-balanced platform's performance during the tilt, an integration between Solidworks, Simscape, and Simulink toolboxes in MATLAB was used. The platform's dynamic model was drawn in SolidWorks and exported as a STEP file used in the Simscape Multibody environment. The system is controlled using the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) co
... Show MoreThe piled raft is a geotechnical composite construction consisting of three elements: piles, raft and soil.
In the design of piled rafts, the load shared between the piles and the raft, and the piles are used up to a
load level that can be of the same order of magnitude as the bearing capacity of a comparable single
pile or even greater. Therefore, the piled raft foundation allows reduction of settlements in a very
economic way as compared to traditional foundation concepts.
This paper presents experimental study to investigate the behavior of piled raft system in sandy
soil. A small scale “prototype” model was tested in a sand box with load applied to the system through
a compression machine. The settlement was
In the last years, the self-balancing platform has become one of the most common candidates to use in many applications such as flight, biomedical fields, industry. This paper introduced the simulated model of a proposed self-balancing platform that described the self–balancing attitude in (X-axis, Y-axis, or both axis) under the influence of road disturbance. To simulate the self-balanced platform's performance during the tilt, an integration between Solidworks, Simscape, and Simulink toolboxes in MATLAB was used. The platform's dynamic model was drawn in SolidWorks and exported as a STEP file used in the Simscape Multibody environment. The system is controlled using the proportional-integral-deriva
... Show MoreThis paper presents a comparison between the electroencephalogram (EEG) channels during scoliosis correction surgeries. Surgeons use many hand tools and electronic devices that directly affect the EEG channels. These noises do not affect the EEG channels uniformly. This research provides a complete system to find the least affected channel by the noise. The presented system consists of five stages: filtering, wavelet decomposing (Level 4), processing the signal bands using four different criteria (mean, energy, entropy and standard deviation), finding the useful channel according to the criteria’s value and, finally, generating a combinational signal from Channels 1 and 2. Experimentally, two channels of EEG data were recorded fro
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