Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus (Jacq. ex Fr.) P. Kumm.) is involved in the destruction of dead wood which is the main place of settlement of several living organisms. After humification, dead wood also becomes an important component of forest soils.

    The purpose of the research is to study temperature and moisture conditions of extensive cultivation of oyster mushrooms on various wood substrates. To accomplish this goal, the following tasks were set: to determine the amount of effective stress temperatures and moisture content of substrates and their influence on the appearance of fruiting bodies of the oyster mushroom; to study the features of the extensive culti

The current investigation examines the combined impacts of ultrasonic radiation and hydrogen donors on the viscosity of heavy crude oil. The impact of exposure time, power, duty cycle, and temperature on the viscosity of Iraqi heavy crude oil with 20.32 API was studied. Also, the viscosity of the oil samples, which were mixed with a hydrogen donor (decalin) and subjected to ultrasonic treatment under optimal conditions, was examined to evaluate the combined impact of ultrasonic radiation and hydrogen donor on the viscosity of crude oil. The viscosity experienced a decrease of 52.34% at 2 min of irradiation, 360 W ultrasonic power, 0.8 duty cycle, 35 ⁰C, and 8vol% decalin. To validate the outcomes of the experiments, asphaltene content, s

The goal of this investigation is to prepare zinc oxide (ZnO) nano-thin films by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique through Q-switching double frequency Nd:YAG laser (532 nm) wavelength, pulse frequency 6 Hz, and 300 mJ energy under vacuum conditions (10-3 torr) at room temperature. (ZnO) nano-thin films were deposited on glass substrates with different thickness of 300, 600 and 900 nm. ZnO films, were then annealed in air at a temperature of 500 °C for one hour. The results were compared with the researchers' previous theoretical study. The XRD analysis of ZnO nano-thin films indicated a hexagonal multi-crystalline wurtzite structure with preferential growth lines (100), (002), (101) for ZnO nano-thin films with different thi

In this paper, a robust invisible watermarking system for digital video encoded by MPEG-4 is presented. The proposed scheme provides watermark hidden by embedding a secret message (watermark) in the sprite area allocated in reference frame (I-frame). The proposed system consists of two main units: (i) Embedding unit and (ii) Extraction unit. In the embedding unit, the system allocates the sprite blocks using motion compensation information. The allocated sprite area in each I–frame is used as hosting area for embedding watermark data. In the extraction unit, the system extracts the watermark data in order to check authentication and ownership of the video. The watermark data embedding method is Blocks average modulation applied on RGB dom

<p>Generally, The sending process of secret information via the transmission channel or any carrier medium is not secured. For this reason, the techniques of information hiding are needed. Therefore, steganography must take place before transmission. To embed a secret message at optimal positions of the cover image under spatial domain, using the developed particle swarm optimization algorithm (Dev.-PSO) to do that purpose in this paper based on Least Significant Bits (LSB) using LSB substitution. The main aim of (Dev. -PSO) algorithm is determining an optimal paths to reach a required goals in the specified search space based on disposal of them, using (Dev.-PSO) algorithm produces the paths of a required goals with most effi

       In terms of the core nucleus plus valence nucleon, shell-model calculations using two model spaces and interactions, the relationship between a nucleus' proton skin, and the difference in proton radii of mirror pairs of nuclei with the same mass number are investigated. In this work, two pairs of mirror nuclei will be studied: 17Ne-17N and 23Al-23Ne. For 17Ne-17N nuclei, p-shell and mixing of psd orbits are adopted with Cohen-Kurath (ckii) and psdsu3 interactions. While for 23Al-23Ne, the sd-shell and sdpf shell are adopted with the universal shell model (USD) and sdpfwa interactions. Also, the ground state density distributions, elastic form factors, and root mean square radii of these pairs' nuclei are studied and com

The focus of this work is on systematically understanding the effects of packing density of the sand grains on both the internal and bulk mechanical properties for strip footing interacting with granular soil. The studies are based on particle image velocimetry (PIV) method, coupled with a high resolution imaging camera. This provides valuable new insights on the evolution of slip planes at grain-scale under different fractions of the ultimate load. Furthermore, the PIV based results are compared with finite element method simulations in which the experimentally characterised parameters and constitutive behaviour are fed as an input, and a good level of agreements are obtained. The reported results would serve to the practicing engineers, r

The consumption of fresh fruits has increased nowadays due to the lifestyle of the consumers. Maintaining the quality and nutritional value of cut fruits during storage is difficult compared to whole fruits. Deterioration of internal and external quality usually occurs in freshly harvested fruits. It is necessary to use different techniques to maintain the quality and increase the shelf life of the freshly cut product. This research studied the effect of treating apple slices with cold plasma once and with filtered water again on quality characteristics (hardness, moisture content, sugar content, carbohydrate content, and color) after being stored for five days. The best treatment was determined using two different pressures of the plasma j

The dose rate for bremsstrahlung radiation from beta particles with energy (1.710) MeV and (2.28) MeV which comes from (32P and 90Y) beta source respectively have been calculated through six materials (polyethylene, wood, aluminum, iron, tungsten and lead) for first shielding material with thickness (x=1) mm which are putting between beta sources and second shield (polyethylene, aluminum and lead) with thickness (1, 2 &4) mm have been calculated. The distance between beta source and second shield is constant (D=1) cm. This dose rate was found by program called Rad Pro Calculator (version 3.26). The results of dose rate of beta particles were plotted as a function to the atomic number (Z) for first shield materials for each