Anaerobic digestion is a technology widely used for treatment of organic waste for biogas production as a source for clean energy. In this study, poultry house wastes (PHW) material was examined as a source for biogas production. The effects of inoculum addition, pretreatment of the substrate, and temperature on the biogas production were taken into full consideration. Results revealed that the effect of inoculum addition was more significant than the alkaline pretreatment of raw waste materials. The biogas recovery from inoculated waste materials exceeds its production from wastes without inoculation by approximately 70% at mesophilic conditions. Whereby, the increase of biogas recovery from pretreated wastes was by 20% higher than its

Cement-based adhesive (CBA) is used as a bonding agent in Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) applications as an alternative to epoxy-based adhesive due to the drawbacks of the epoxy system under severe service conditions which negatively affect the bond between the CFRP and strengthened elements. This paper reports the results of, an investigation carried out to develop two types of CBA using magnetized water (MW) for mixing and curing. Two magnetic devices (MD-I and MD-II), with different magnetic field strengths (9000 and 6000 Gauss) respectively, were employed for water magnetization. Different water flows with different water circulation times in the magnetizer were used for each device. Compressive and splitting tensile strength te

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.

Background: The collagen triple helix repeat containing 1 (CTHRC1) protein has been connected to decreased levels of vitamin D and calcium, as well as obesity. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between CTHRC1 and osteoporosis in post-menopausal women and compare with healthy subjects. Subjects and Methods: A cross-sectional study consisted of 86 women were enrolled in this study and divided into three groups based on the results of dual-energy densitometry (DXA): 30 women with osteoporosis, 30 women with osteopenia, and 26 healthy women. Data on demographic and clinical features and laboratory values of Calcium (Ca) and Vitamin D3 (V.D3) were recorded. Results: Women with osteoporosis had significantly increased level

This paper is focused on orthogonal function approximation technique FAT-based adaptive backstepping control of a geared DC motor coupled with a rotational mechanical component. It is assumed that all parameters of the actuator are unknown including the torque-current constant (i.e., unknown input coefficient) and hence a control system with three motor control modes is proposed: 1) motor torque control mode, 2) motor current control mode, and 3) motor voltage control mode. The proposed control algorithm is a powerful tool to control a dynamic system with an unknown input coefficient. Each uncertain parameter/term is represented by a linear combination of weighting and orthogonal basis function vectors. Chebyshev polynomial is used