Low grade crude palm oil (LGCPO) presents as an attractive option as feedstock for biodiesel production due to its low cost and non-competition with food resources. Typically, LGCPO contains high contents of free fatty acids (FFA), rendering it impossible in direct trans-esterification processes due to the saponification reaction. Esterification is the typical pre-treatment process to reduce the FFA content and to produce fatty acid methyl ester (FAME). The pre-treatment of LGCPO using two different acid catalysts, such as titanium oxysulphate sulphuric acid complex hydrate (TiOSH) and 5-sulfosalicylic acid dihydrate (5-SOCAH) was investigated for the first time in this study. The optimum conditions for the homogenous catalyst (5-SOCAH) wer

     This research aims to predict new COVID-19 cases in Bandung, Indonesia. The system implemented two types of deep learning methods to predict this. They were the recurrent neural networks (RNN) and long-short-term memory (LSTM) algorithms. The data used in this study were the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Bandung from March 2020 to December 2020. Pre-processing of the data was carried out, namely data splitting and scaling, to get optimal results. During model training, the hyperparameter tuning stage was carried out on the sequence length and the number of layers. The results showed that RNN gave a better performance. The test used the RMSE, MAE, and R2 evaluation methods, with the best numbers being  0.66975075, 0.470

The study was planned to evaluate the effect of adding Guanidinoacetic acid in some characteristics of the sperm of the rams. This study was conducted in the animal field of the Animal Production Department / Faculty of Agricultural Engineering Sciences / University of Baghdad, for the period from 5/8/2018 to 28/2/2019. In this experiment, 3 rams were used at the age of 2-2.5 years and weighed 50-54 kg. The semen was collected early in the morning and once a week and the semen was pooled to remove the individual differences. The treatments were divided: GAA-free control group, treatment T1 (0.05 mg / 100 ml GAA), T2 treatment (0.1 mg / 100 ml GAA) and T3 treatment (0.2 mg / 100 ml GAA). The results of the study showed a significant decrease

Within this paper, we developed a new series of organic chromophores based on triphenyleamine (TPA) (AL1, AL-2, AL-11 and AL-22) by engineering the structure of the electron donor (D) unit via replacing a phenyle ring or inserting thiophene as a π-linkage. For the sake of scrutinizing the impact of the TPA donating ability and the spacer upon the photovoltaic, absorptional, energetic, and geometrical characteristic of these sensitizers, density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) have been utilized. According to structural characteristics, incorporating the acceptor, π-bridge and TPA does not result in a perfect coplanar conformation in AL-22. We computed EHOMO, ELUMO and bandgap (Eg) energies by performing frequency a

Reservoir fluids properties are very important in reservoir engineering computations such as material balance calculations, well testing analyses, reserve estimates, and numerical reservoir simulations. Isothermal oil compressibility is required in fluid flow problems, extension of fluid properties from values at the bubble point pressure to higher pressures of interest and in material balance calculations (Ramey, Spivey, and McCain). Isothermal oil compressibility is a measure of the fractional change in volume as pressure is changed at constant temperature (McCain). The most accurate method for determining the Isothermal oil compressibility is a laboratory PVT analysis; however, the evaluation of exploratory wells often require an esti

Academic chemical laboratories (ACL) are considered public places  the employees come in contact with a variety of pollutants. The aim of the current study was to detect heavy metals levels in the indoor air of ACL in two universities in Baghdad city and assess their levels in the academic employees’ scalp hair as biomarkers. Air samples inside ACL were collected to detect Fe, Cd, Zn, Pb and Cu. Scalp hair samples were collected from 40 adult chemical laboratory employees aged 30-60 years, who worked 5 days/week for 6 hours a day. Personal information relating to employees such as age, duration of exposure, smoking habit and sex, was collected as a questionnaire. The results of this study concluded that academic laboratory employ

    In this research, we have achieved the description of radionuclides that exist in the samples of Diyala river sediments as well as to measure the specific activities using gamma-ray spectroscopy. The eleven samples were collected among the length of Diyala River starting from Al- Rustumiya and finishing at the point where Diyala River meets Tigris which is in Baghdad.      Gamma-ray spectrometry system consists of high-purity germanium detector (HpGe) with 50% efficiency and resolution (2.2 keV) for the energy (1332 keV) was used for standard source 60Co.     Card spectrum analyzer connected to the PC type Pentium 4 was used to view the spectrum. And  rates of the speci

  Malondialdehyde (MDA) is one of many low molecular weight end-products of lipid peroxidation; it is as an index of lipid peroxidation. Uric acid is one of the endogenous oxidant-antioxidant paradoxes.        The aim of this study is to evaluate the levels of serum MDA and uric acid in smokers and non smokers.  This study was carried out from January to July 2012 on (30) smokers and (30) non smokers. Serum MDA level was measured spectrophotometrically using thiobarbituric acid method, whereas serum uric acid was measured using enzymatic colorimetric method.      The results of the study revealed a significant increase (P<0.001) in uric acid value in smokers subject

Background: Oral Lichen planus (OLP) is a T-cell mediated chronic inflammatory oral mucosal disease of unknown etiology. Recent studies have reported an increased oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation in such patients. This suggests that reactive oxygen species may have a role in the pathogenesis of lichen planus. Oxidative stress in OLP release molecules consisting of granzymes resulting in local tissue damage in the effectors. Antioxidants that can defend against oxidative stress in the body cells include enzymes, as well as non- enzymatic antioxidants, such as melatonin, uric acid, vitamin A and E. Purpose: To study the level of salivary vitamin E and uric acid as antioxidant agents in patients with OLP and compared with healthy con