The taxonomy of Ficus L., 1753 species is confusing because of the intense morphological variability and the ambiguity of the taxa. This study handled 36 macro-morphological characteristics to clarify the taxonomic identity of the taxa. The study revealed that Ficus is represented in the Egyptian gardens with forty-one taxa; 33 species, 4 subspecies and 4 varieties, and classified into five subgenera: Ficus Corner, 1960; Terega Raf., 1838; Sycomorus Raf., 1838; Synoecia (Miq.) Miq., 1867, and Spherosuke Raf.,1838; out of them seven were misidentified. Amongst, four new Ficus taxa were recently introduced to Egypt namely: F. lingua subsp. lingua Warb. ex De Wild. & T. Durand, 1901; F. pumila L., 1753; F. rumphii Blume, 1825, and F. su

Rate of penetration plays a vital role in field development process because the drilling operation is expensive and include the cost of equipment and materials used during the penetration of rock and efforts of the crew in order to complete the well without major problems. It’s important to finish the well as soon as possible to reduce the expenditures. So, knowing the rate of penetration in the area that is going to be drilled will help in speculation of the cost and that will lead to optimize drilling outgoings. In this research, an intelligent model was built using artificial intelligence to achieve this goal.  The model was built using adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system to predict the rate of penetration in

In this work, enhancement to the fluorescence characteristics of laser dye solutions hosting highly-pure titanium dioxide nanoparticles as random gain media. This was achieved by coating two opposite sides of the cells containing these media with nanostructured thin films of highly-pure titanium dioxide. Two laser dyes; Rhodamine B and Coumarin 102, were used to prepare solutions in hexanol and methanol, respectively, as hosts for the nanoparticles. The nanoparticles and thin films were prepared by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The enhancement was observed by the narrowing of fluorescence linewidth as well as by increasing the fluorescence intensity. These parameters were compared to those of the dye only and the dye solution

In this study, a packed bed was used to remove pathogenic bacteria from synthetic contaminated water. Two types of packing material substrates, sand and zeolite, were used. These substrates were coated with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), which were prepared by decomposition of Ag ions from AgNO3 solution. The prepared coated packings were characterized using scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy. The packed column consisted of a PVC cylinder of 2 cm diameter and 20 cm in length. The column was packed with silver nanoparticlecoated substrates (sand or zeolite) at a depth of 10 cm. Four types of bacteria were studied: Escherichia coli, Shigella dysenteriae, Pseudomonas aerugi

In this study, the potential of adsorption of amoxicillin antibiotic (AMOX) from aqueous solutions using prepared activated carbon (AC) was studied. The used AC was prepared from an inexpensive and available precursor (sunflower seed hulls (SSH)) and activated by potassium hydroxide (KOH). The prepared AC was examined for its ability to remove AMOX from aqueous contaminated solutions and characterized with the aid of N2 -adsorption/desorption isotherm Brunauer–Emmett– Teller, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and Fourier-transform infrared. Zeta potential of the prepared activated carbon from sunflower seed hulls (SSHAC) were studied in relation to AMOX adsorption. The physical and chemical propert

Water pollution as a result of contamination with dye-contaminating effluents is a severe issue for water reservoirs, which instigated the study of biodegradation of Reactive Red 195 and Reactive Blue dyes by E. coli and Bacillus sp. The effects of occupation time, solution pH, initial dyes concentrations, biomass loading, and temperature were investigated via batch-system experiments by using the Design of Experiment (DOE) for 2 levels and 5 factors response surface methodology (RSM). The operational conditions used for these factors were optimized using quadratic techniques by reducing the number of experiments. The results revealed that the two types of bacteria had a powerful effect on biodegradable dyes. The regression analysis reveale

In this work, multilayer nanostructures were prepared from two metal oxide thin films by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique. These metal oxide were nickel oxide (NiO) and titanium dioxide (TiO2). The prepared nanostructures showed high structural purity as confirmed by the spectroscopic and structural characterization tests, mainly FTIR, XRD and EDX. This feature may be attributed to the fine control of operation parameters of dc reactive magnetron sputtering system as well as the preparation conditions using the same system. The nanostructures prepared in this work can be successfully used for the fabrication of nanodevices for photonics and optoelectronics requiring highly-pure nanomaterials.

This study investigates the implementation of Taguchi design in the estimation of minimum corrosion rate of mild-steel in cooling tower that uses saline solution of different concentration. The experiments were set on the basis of Taguchi’s L16 orthogonal array. The runs were carried out under different condition such as inlet concentration of saline solution, temperature, and flowrate. The Signal-to- Noise ratio and ANOVA analysis were used to define the impact of cooling tower working conditions on the corrosion rate. A regression had been modelled and optimized to identify the optimum level for the working parameters that had been founded to be 13%NaCl, 35ᴼC, and 1 l/min. Also a confirmation run to establish the p

Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) bars are anisotropic in nature and have high tensile strength in the fiber direction. The use of High-Strength Concrete (HSC) allows for better use of the high-strength properties of FRP bars. The mechanical properties of FRP bars can yield to large crack widths and deflections. As a result, the design of concrete elements reinforced with FRP materials is often governed by the Serviceability Limit States (SLS). This study investigates the short-term serviceability behavior of FRP RC I-beams. Eight RC I-beams reinforced with carbon-FRP (CFRP) and four steel RC I-beams, for comparison purposes, were tested under two-point loading.
Deformations on the concrete and crack widths and spacing are measured and