This study examined the effects of water scarcity on rural household economy in El Fashir Rural Council / North Darfur State- western Sudan. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used as to get a deeper understanding of the impact of water scarcity on the rural house economy in the study area. 174 households out of 2017 were selected from 45 villages which were distributed in eight village councils forming the study area. Statistical methods were used to manipulate the data of the study. The obtained results revealed that water scarcity negatively affected the rural household economy in the study area in many features. These include the followings: much family efforts and time were directed to fetch for water consequentl

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of corrosive environment (corrosive ferric chloride of 1, 2, 5, 6% wt. at room temperature), immersion period of (48, 72, 96, 120, 144 hours), and surface roughness on pitting corrosion characteristics and use the data to build an artificial neural network and test its ability to predict the depth and intensity of pitting corrosion in a variety of conditions. Pit density and depth were calculated using a pitting corrosion test on carbon steel (C-4130). Pitting corrosion experimental tests were used to develop artificial neural network (ANN) models for predicting pitting corrosion characteristics. It was found that artificial neural network models were shown to be

Carbides or nitrides thin films present materials with good mechanical properties for industrial applications as they can be coatings at low temperatures serve temperature sensitive surfaces. In this work the effect of the C percentage on the mechanical properties represented by the Young modulus (E) of combinatorial magnetron sputtered TiC_x (34%x˂65%) has been studied. The structure of the produced films is TiC independent on the C concentration. The mechanical properties are increased with increasing the C concentration up to 50%, and then decreasing with further C % increasing. These results can be explained by considering the resultant residual stresses.

This study aims to measure and analyze the direct and indirect effects of the financial variables, namely (public spending, public revenues, internal debt, and external debt), on the non-oil productive sectors with and without bank credit as an intermediate variable, using quarterly data for the period (2004Q1–2021Q4), converted using Eviews 12. To measure the objective of the study, the path analysis method was used using IBM SPSS-AMOS. The study concluded that the direct and indirect effects of financial variables have a weak role in directing bank credit towards the productive sectors in Iraq, which amounted to (0.18), as a result of market risks or unstable expectations in the economy. In addition to the weak credit ratings of borr

A compact microstrip six-port reflectometer (SPR) with extended bandwidth is proposed in this paper. The design is based on using 16-dB multi-section coupled line directional couplers and a multi-section 3-dB Wilkinson power divider operating from 1 to 6 GHz. The proposed SPR employs only two calibration standards: a matched load and an open load. As compared to other dielectric substrates, fabricating the proposed SPR involves using a low-cost (FR4) substrate. A novel algorithm is also proposed to estimate the complex reflection coefficient over the frequency ranges at which the standard performance of the circuit components is not fully satisfied. The new algorithm is based on the circles’ intersection points, which have been de

This work describes the enhancement of phenol red decolorization through immobilizing of laccase in chitosan and enzyme recycling. Commercial laccase from white rot fungus, Trametesversicolor (Tvlac), was immobilizedin to freshly prepared chitosan beads by using glutaraldehyde as a cross linker. Characterization of prepared chitosan was confirmed by FTIR and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Tvlac (46.2 U/mL) immobilized into chitosan beads at 0.8 % glutaraldehyde (v/v) within 24 hrs. Synthetic (HBT) and natural (vanillin) mediators were used to enhance dye decolorizoation. It was found that 89 % of phenol red was decolorized by chitosan beads within 180 min. in the absence of enzyme and mediator, while decolorization percenta

Titanium oxide nanoparticles-modified smectite (SMC-nTiO2) as a low-cost adsorbent was investigated for the removal of Rhodamine B (RhB) from aqueous solutions. The adsorbents (SMC and SMC-nTiO2) were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The effects of various parameters like contact time, adsorbent weight, pH, and temperatures were examined. Three kinetic equations (pseudo-first-order (PFO), pseudo-second-order (PSO), and intra-particle diffusion) were used to evaluate the experimental kinetic of the data and the results showed that the adsorption process is in line with the PSO kinetic model. Adsorption equilibrium isotherms were modeled using La

Two different polyvinyl alcohol/polyvinyl chloride (PVA/PVC) hollow fiber composite nanofiltration membranes were prepared after PVC hollow fiber membranes were coated using dip-coating method with PVA aqueous solution, which was composed of PVA, fatty alcohol polyoxyethylene ether (AEO9), and water [PVA/AEO9/water (4:0.5:95.5) wt%]. Effect of two different PVC hollow fiber immersion times in coating solution were studied. Cross-section, internal and external surfaces of the PVC hollow fibers and PVA/PVC composite nanofiltration membranes structures were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), pure water permeation flux and solutes rejection. It was found that, the coating layer thickness on the outer surface of the 19 wt% P