To evaluate the effectiveness of different microwave irradiation exposure times on the disinfection of dental stone samples immersed in different solutions, and its affect on the dimensional accuracy and surface porosity. Dental stone casts were inoculated with an isolate of Bacillus subtilis to examine the efficiency of microwave irradiation as a disinfection method while immersed in different solutions; water, 40% sodium chloride, or without immersion for different durations. Dimensional accuracy and surface porosity were also evaluated. Significant reduction in colony counts of Bacillus subtilis were observed after 5 minutes of microwave irradiation of immersed dental casts in water and NaCl solution. No evidence of growth was observed a

A second-order sliding mode control is used for high-order uncertain plants using equivalent control approach to improve the performance of control systems. They combine backstepping with quasi-continuous controller and twisting controllers. This paper considers a two of the most popular controllers that are used to solve the nonlinearities problem which are the backstepping quasi-continuous control (BQCC) and backstepping twisting controllers to control the angular velocity of a hydraulic motor to improve tracking performance and robustness to uncertainties. For the system dynamics, a linear state feedback with suitable high gain was designed as the virtual controller, where steady state error can be made arbitrarily small according to the

The fall angle of sun rays on the surface of a photovoltaic PV panel and its temperature is negatively affecting the panel electrical energy produced and efficiency. The fall angle problem was commonly solved by using a dual-axis solar tracker that continually maintains the panel orthogonally positioning to the sun rays all day long. This leads to maximum absorption for solar radiation necessary to produce maximum amount of energy and maintain high level of electrical efficiency. To solve the PV panel temperature problem, a Water-Flow Double Glazing WFDG technique has been introduced as a new cooling tool to reduce the panel temperature. In this paper, an integration design of the water glazing system with a dual-axis tracker has been ac

Industrial machining workshops generate substantial quantities of aluminum wire offcuts and filings that cannot be re-entered into bulk metal recycling circuits, posing both a resource management challenge and a potential environmental burden. This study demonstrates a closed-loop valorization route in which this low-grade aluminum waste is converted into nanostructured aluminum oxide (Al2O3) nanoparticles (NPs) by two scalable synthesis pathways (i) chemo-thermal calcination of precipitated Al(OH)₃ at 1000 °C and 1200 °C for 1 and 4 h, and (ii) direct chemical precipitation via AlCl3/Na2CO3 reaction, and then deployed as a functional additive in water-based drilling fluids (WBDFs) used by the oil and gas industry. Comprehensive chara

In this paper, a fusion of K models of full-rank weighted nonnegative tensor factor two-dimensional deconvolution (K-wNTF2D) is proposed to separate the acoustic sources that have been mixed in an underdetermined reverberant environment. The model is adapted in an unsupervised manner under the hybrid framework of the generalized expectation maximization and multiplicative update algorithms. The derivation of the algorithm and the development of proposed full-rank K-wNTF2D will be shown. The algorithm also encodes a set of variable sparsity parameters derived from Gibbs distribution into the K-wNTF2D model. This optimizes each sub-model in K-wNTF2D with the required sparsity to model the time-varying variances of the sources in the s

Early diagnosis and clinical decision-making depend on accurate brain tumor classification using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). However, traditional deep learning methods usually rely on centralized medical data, which raises privacy concerns and limits the use of distributed clinical data. This research proposes a privacy-preserving federated learning framework for MRI image-based binary brain tumor classification using a decentralized ResNet-18 architecture that enables collaborative training without sharing raw patient data. To reflect realistic clinical conditions, the framework integrates heterogeneous multi-source datasets in different image formats (PNG and JPG) and evaluates performance under both IID and non-IID settings

The neutrophil/ lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR) have the potential to be inflammatory markers that reflect the activity of many inflammatory diseases. The aim of this study was to evaluate the NLR and PLR as potential markers of disease activity in patients with ankylosing spondylitis.