Artificial roughness applied to a Solar Air Heater (SAH) absorber plate is a popular technique for increasing its total thermal efficiency (ηt−th). In this paper, the influence of geometrical parameters of V-down ribs attached below the corrugated absorbing plate of a SAH on the ηt−th was examined. The impacts of key roughness parameters, including relative pitch p/e (6–12), relative height e/D (0.019–0.043), angles of attack α (30–75°), and Re (1000–20,000), were examined under real weather conditions. The SAH ηt−th roughened by V-down ribs was predicted using an in-house developed conjugate heat-transfer numerical model. The maximum SAH ηt−th was shown to be 78.8% as predicted under the steady-state condition

Position control of servo motor systems is a challenging task because of inevitable factors such as uncertainties, nonlinearities, parametric variations, and external perturbations. In this article, to alleviate the above issues, a practical adaptive fast terminal sliding mode control (PAFTSMC) is proposed for better tracking performance of the servo motor system by using a state observer and bidirectional adaptive law. First, a smooth-tangent-hyperbolic-function-based practical fast terminal sliding mode control (PFTSM) surface is designed to ensure not only fast finite time tracking error convergence but also chattering reduction. Second, the PAFTSMC is proposed for the servo motor, in which a two-way adaptive law is designed to further s

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive disorder that affects cognitive brain functions and starts many years before its clinical manifestations. A biomarker that provides a quantitative measure of changes in the brain due to AD in the early stages would be useful for early diagnosis of AD, but this would involve dealing with large numbers of people because up to 50% of dementia sufferers do not receive formal diagnosis. Thus, there is a need for accurate, low-cost, and easy to use biomarkers that could be used to detect AD in its early stages. Potentially, electroencephalogram (EEG) based biomarkers can play a vital role in early diagnosis of AD as they can fulfill these needs. This is a cross-sectional study that aims to demon

Copper selenide (Cu2Se) thin films were prepared by thermal evaporation at RT with thickness 500 nm. The heat-treating for (400 &500) K for the absorber layer has been investigated. This research includes, studying the structural properties of X-ray diffraction (XRD) that show the Cu2Se thin film (Cubic) and has a polycrystalline orientation prevalent (220). Moreover, studying the effect of annealing on their surface morphology properties by using Atomic Force Microscopy AFM. Optical properties were considered using the transmittance and absorbance spectra had been recorded when wavelength range (400 - 1000) nm in order to study the absorption coefficient and energy gap. It was found that these films had allowed direct transitio

The convolutional neural networks (CNN) are among the most utilized neural networks in various applications, including deep learning. In recent years, the continuing extension of CNN into increasingly complicated domains has made its training process more difficult. Thus, researchers adopted optimized hybrid algorithms to address this problem. In this work, a novel chaotic black hole algorithm-based approach was created for the training of CNN to optimize its performance via avoidance of entrapment in the local minima. The logistic chaotic map was used to initialize the population instead of using the uniform distribution. The proposed training algorithm was developed based on a specific benchmark problem for optical character recog

In this paper, an Integral Backstepping Controller (IBC) is designed and optimized for full control, of rotational and translational dynamics, of an unmanned Quadcopter (QC). Before designing the controller, a mathematical model for the QC is developed in a form appropriate for the IBC design. Due to the underactuated property of the QC, it is possible to control the QC Cartesian positions (X, Y, and Z) and the yaw angle through ordering the desired values for them. As for the pitch and roll angles, they are generated by the position controllers. Backstepping Controller (BC) is a practical nonlinear control scheme based on Lyapunov design approach, which can, therefore, guarantee the convergence of the position tracking

Epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a process comprising cellular and molecular events which result in cells shifting from an epithelial to a mesenchymal phenotype. Periodontitis is a destructive chronic disease of the periodontium initiated in response to a dysbiotic microbiome, and dominated by Gram-negative bacteria in the subgingival niches accompanied by an aberrant immune response in susceptible subjects. Both EMT and periodontitis share common risk factors and drivers, including Gram-negative bacteria, excess inflammatory cytokine production, smoking, oxidative stress and diabetes mellitus. In addition, periodontitis is characterized by down-regulation of key epithelial markers such as E-cadherin together with up-regulation of