This research utilized natural asphalt (NA) deposits from sulfur springs in western Iraq. Laboratory tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of an asphalt mixture incorporating NA and verify its suitability for local pavement applications. To achieve this, a combination of two types of NA, namely soft SNA and hard HNA, was blended to create a binder known as Type HSNA. The resulting HSNA exhibited a penetration grade that adhered to Iraqi specifications. Various percentages of NA (20%, 40%, 60%, and 80%) were added to petroleum asphalt. The findings revealed enhanced physical properties of HSNA, which also satisfied the requirements outlined in the Iraqi specifications for asphalt cement. Consequently, HSNA can serve as an

As one type of resistance furnace, the electrical tube furnace (ETF) typically experiences input noise, measurement noise, system uncertainties, unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances, which significantly degrade its temperature control performance. To provide precise, and robust temperature tracking performance for the ETF, a robust composite control (RCC) method is proposed in this paper. The overall RCC method consists of four elements: First, the mathematical model of the ETF system is deduced, then a state feedback control (SFC) is constructed. Third, a novel disturbance observer (DO) is designed to estimate the lumped disturbance with one observer parameter. Moreover, the stability of the closed loop system including controller

This paper presents a meta-heuristic swarm based optimization technique for solving robot path planning. The natural activities of actual ants inspire which named Ant Colony Optimization. (ACO) has been proposed in this work to find the shortest and safest path for a mobile robot in different static environments with different complexities. A nonzero size for the mobile robot has been considered in the project by taking a tolerance around the obstacle to account for the actual size of the mobile robot. A new concept was added to standard Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) for further modifications. Simulations results, which carried out using MATLAB 2015(a) environment, prove that the suggested algorithm outperforms the standard version of AC

Levan is an exopolysaccharide produced by various microorganisms and has a variety of applications. In this research, the aim was to demonstrate the biological activity of levan which produced from B. phenoliresistens KX139300. These were done via study the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer and antileishmanial activities in vitro. The antioxidant levan was shown 80.9% activity at 1250 µg/mL concentration. The efficient anti-inflammatory activity of 88% protein inhibition was noticed with levan concentration at 35 µg/mL. The cytotoxic activity of levan at 2500 µg/mL concentration showed a maximum cytotoxic effect on L20B cell line and promastigotes of Leishmani tropica. Levan has dose-dependent anticancer and antileishmanial acti

Atorvastatin (ATR) is a poorly water-soluble anti-hyperlipidemic drug. The drug belongs to the class II group according to the biopharmaceutical classification system (BCS) with low bioavailability due to its low solubility. Solid dispersion is an effective technique for enhancing the solubility and dissolution of drugs. Phospholipid solid dispersion (PSD) using phosphatidylcholine (PC) as a carrier with or without adsorbent (magnesium aluminum silicate, silicon dioxide 15nm, silicon dioxide 30nm, calcium silicate) was used to prepare ATR PSD using different drug: PC: adsorbent ratios by solvent evaporation method. The resulted PSD was evaluated for its percentage yield, drug content, solubility, dissolution rate, Fourier transforma

In this work, the photocatalytic degradation of indigo carmine (IC) using zinc oxide suspension was studied. The effect of influential parameters such as initial indigo carmine concentration and catalyst loading were studied with the effect of Vis irradiation in the presence of reused ZnO was also investigated. The increased in initial dye concentration decreased the photodegradation and the increased catalyst loading increased the degradation percentage and the reused-ZnO exhibits lower photocatalytic activity than the ZnO catalyst. It has been found that the photocatalytic degradation of indigo carmine obeyed the pseudo-first-order kinetic reaction in presence of zinc oxide. This was found from plotting the relationship between ln

A new macrocyclic multidentate Schiff-base ligand Na4L consisting of two submacrocyclic units (10,21-bis-iminomethyl-3,6,14,17- tricyclo[17.3.1.18,12]tetracosa-1(23),2,6,8,10,12(24),13,17,19,21,-decaene-23,24-disodium) and its tetranuclear metal complexes with Mn(II), Co(II), Ni(II), Cu(II), and Zn(II) are reported. Na4L was prepared via a template approach, which is based on the condensation reaction of sodium 2,4,6-triformyl phenolate with ethylenediamine in mole ratios of 2 : 3. The tetranuclear macrocyclic-based complexes were prepared from the reaction of the corresponding metal chloride with the ligand. The mode of bonding and overall geometry of the compounds were determined through physicochemical and spectroscopic methods. These st