Human resources have been regarded as the most important asset for any organization because of its essential part in achieving the sustainable competitive advantage and survival. Managing human resources is very challenging and requires an effective bundle of practices that contribute to attaining the organizational goals. This study tries to confirm the importance of HRM practices in small businesses which came to play a vital role in the economies of the world, through clarifying the influence of HRM practices on the organizational performance, using a mediating variable (employees’ outcomes). Also the study attempts to highlight the key role of governmental support from view point of small businesses, through verifying the significant

The Moisture damage is considered as one of the main challenge for the experts in the field of asphalt pavement design. The aims of the present study is to modify moisture resistance of the asphalt concrete by utilizing ceramic fibers as a type of reinforcement incorporated with hydrated lime. For this purpose, a penetration grade of the asphalt cement (40-50) was utilized as a binder with an aggregate of the maximum nominal size of 12.5mm and mineral filler limestone dust. A series of specimens has been fabricated by utilizing 0.50, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 percentages of ceramic fibers. For each of these contents, another subsequent group of specimens with hydrated lime with 0.0, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 percentages were moulded. For the additi

Background: Selenium-73 with half- life of 7.15 hour emits β⁺ in nature and has six stable isotopes which are ( ⁷⁴Se,⁷⁶Se,⁷⁷Se,⁷⁸Se,⁸⁰Se and ⁸²Se ). Selenium-73 has many applications in technology and radioselenium compounds of metallic have found various applications in medicine.

Objective:  To make a comparison between different reactions that produced cross sections of Se-73 radioisotopes.

Subjects and methods: The feasibility of the production of Selenium -73 via various nuclear reactions was investigated. Excitation functions of ⁷³Se production by the re

ZnO nanostructures were synthesized by hydrothermal method at different temperatures and growth times. The effect of increasing the temperature on structural and optical properties of ZnO were analyzed and discussed. The prepared ZnO nanostructures were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV–Vis. absorption spectroscopy (UV–Vis.), Photoluminescence (PL), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). In this work, hexagonal crystal structure prepared ZnO nanostructures was observed using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and the average crystallite size equal 14.7 and 23.8 nm for samples synthesized at growth time 7 and 8 hours respectively. A nanotubes-shaped surface morphology was found using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The optic

The presence of heavy metals in the environment is major concern due to their toxicity. In the present study a strong acid cation exchange resin, Amberlite IR 120 was used for the removal of lead, zinc and copper from simulated wastewater. The optimum conditions were determined in a batch system of concentration 100 mg/L, pH range between 1 and 8, contact time between 5 and 120 minutes, and amount of adsorbent was from 0.05 to 0.45 g/100 ml. A constant stirring speed, 180 rpm, was chosen during all of the experiments. The optimum conditions were found to be pH of 4 for copper and lead and pH 6 for zinc, contact time of 60 min and 0.35 g of adsorbent. Three different temperatures (25, 40 and 60°C) were selected to investigate the effect

The removal of cadmium ions from simulated groundwater by zeolite permeable reactive barrier was investigated. Batch tests have been performed to characterize the equilibrium sorption properties of the zeolite in cadmium-containing aqueous solutions. Many operating parameters such as contact time, initial pH of solution, initial concentration, resin dosage and agitation speed were investigated. The best values of these parameters that will achieved removal efficiency of cadmium (=99.5%) were 60 min, 6.5, 50 mg/L, 0.25 g/100 ml and 270 rpm respectively. A 1D explicit finite difference model has been developed to describe pollutant transport within a groundwater taking the pollutant sorption on the permeable reactive barrier (PRB), which i

The research aims to use a new technology for industrial water concentrating that contains poisonous metals and recovery quantities from pure water. Therefore, the technology investigated is the forward osmosis process (FO). It is a new process that use membranes available commercial and this process distinguishes by its low cost compared to other process. Sodium chloride (NaCl) was used as draw solution to extract water from poisonous metals solution. The driving force in the FO process is provided by a different in osmotic pressure (concentration) across the membrane between the draw and poisonous metals solution sides. Experimental work was divided into three parts. The first part includes operating the forward osmosis process using T

The extraction of Cupressus sempervirens L. or cypress essential oil was studied in this paper. This cypress oil was extracted by using the hydro-distillation method, using a clevenger apparatus. Cupressus sempervirens L. leaves were collected from Hit city in Al-Anbar province – Iraq. The influences of three important parameters on the process of oil extraction; water which used as a solvent to the solid ratio (5:1 and 14:1 (ml solvent/g plant), temperature (30 to 100 °C) and processing time, were examined to obtain the best processing conditions to achieve the maximum yield of the essential oil. Also, the mathematical model was described to calculate the mass transfer coefficient. Therefore, the best conditions, that were obtained in

This paper investigates the performance evaluation of two state feedback controllers, Pole Placement (PP) and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR). The two controllers are designed for a Mass-Spring-Damper (MSD) system found in numerous applications to stabilize the MSD system performance and minimize the position tracking error of the system output. The state space model of the MSD system is first developed. Then, two meta-heuristic optimizations, Simulated Annealing (SA) optimization and Ant Colony (AC) optimization are utilized to optimize feedback gains matrix K of the PP and the weighting matrices Q and R of the LQR to make the MSD system reach stabilization and reduce the oscillation of the response. The Matlab softwar

The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy of diode laser (λ=940 nm) in the management of gingival hyperpigmentation compared to the conventional bur method. Materials and methods: Eighteen patients with gingival hyperpigmentation were selected for the study with an age between 12-37 years old. The site of treatment was the upper gingiva using diode laser for the right half and the conventional method for the left half. All patients were re-evaluated after the following intervals: 3 days, 7 days, 1 month and 6 months post-operation. Pain and functions were re-evaluated in each visit for a period of 1 day, 3 days and 1 week post-operation. Laser parameters included 1.5 W in continuous mode with an initiated tip (400 μm) placed in