Solvent extraction of phosphoric acid

This work investigated the purification of phosphoric acid using a suitable organic solvent, followed by re-extraction of the acid from the solvent using water. The work consisted of practical batch and continuous studies and the economics and design of a full scale plant, based on the experimental data. A comprehensive literature survey on the purification of wet process phosphoric acid by organic solvents is presented and the literature describing the design and operation of mixer-settlers has also been reviewed. In batch studies, the equilibrium and distribution curves for the systems water-phosphoric acid-solvent for Benzaldehyde, Cyclohexanol and Methylisobutylketone (MIBK) were determined together with hydrodynamic characteristics for both pure and impure systems. The settling time increased with acid concentration, but power input had no effect. Drop size was found to reduce with acid concentration and power input. For the continuous studies a novel horizontal mixer~settler cascade was designed, constructed and operated using pure and impure acid with MIBK as the solvent. The cascade incorporates three air turbine agitated, cylindrical 900 ml mixers, and three cylindrical 200 ml settlers with air-lift solvent interstage transfer. Mean drop size in the fully baffled mixer was correlated. Drop size distributions were log-normal and size decreased with acid concentration and power input and increased with dispersed phase hold-up. Phase inversion studies showed that the width of the ambivalent region depended upon rotor speed, hold-up and acid concentration. Settler characteristics were investigated by measuring wedge length. Distribution coefficients of impurities and acid were also investigated. The following optimum extraction conditions were found: initial acid concentration 63%, phase ratio of solvent to acid 1:1 (v/v), impeller speed recommended 900 r.p.m. In the washing step the maximum phase ratio of solvent to water was 8:1 (v/v). Work on phosphoric acid concentration involved constructing distillation equipment consisting of a 10& spherical still. A 100 T/d scale detailed process design including capital cost, operating cost and profitability was also completed. A profit model for phosphoric acid extraction was developed and maximised. Recommendations are made for both the application of the results to a practical design and for extensions of the study

Global viewing in East London

This article engages with the understandings, responses and news viewing frameworks of young multi-ethnic, working-class Londoners following the war in Iraq and the so-called 'War on Terror'. Is television news itself viewed as a monolithic entity, either in its own right or as the mouthpiece of whichever regime is in power? Are some viewers more prone to accept the invitations of certain television news discourses than others, while some remain aloof, sceptical and critical? Based on a sustained qualitative analysis of audience research in East London, this article problematizes the often taken-for-granted answers to these questions. It urges a rethinking of simplistic assumptions about the connections between discourses on the TV screen and in the living room. It finds unusual gaps and connections between discourses used by politicians at given points in time and those that affect communities in their material and psychic life in particular places

INDICATIONS OF PRIMARY CAESAREAN SECTIONS AMONG IRAQI WOMEN IN KARBALA CITY DURING 2018

Objective: To study the different indications of primary caesarean sections for women attending Karbala Maternity Teaching Hospital and Al-kafeel Super Specialty hospital. Methods: This was cross-sectional study, the sample was 330 women. Over the period from 1st January 2018 to [30]th June 2018. Questionnaire was filled by direct interviews. A pilot study was done; the subjects of the pilot including 20 women with previous PCS, and some modifications were occurred done accordingly. The sample of study was convenient sample including all women for whom PCS was done in the first time, it was 330 women. Then data was entered and analyzed by SPSS program version 22. Results: The commonest age group in this study was (25-29) year, which represent 32.1%. Majority of the study sample (49.7%) were primigravida. The percentage of indications of Caesarean section include fetal distress 22.1%, prolonged labor18.5%, malpresentation 17.3% and amniotic fluid leakage 16.4%. Emergency CS had 43.6%, and maternal request had 21.5%. Conclusion: Largest number of participant were primigravidarum which read big and serious problem for women life in future. Most women had taken regular antenatal care. Fetal distress and prolonged labor were the most common indications for caesarean section. Fetal outcome was good that reflect good antenatal care and perinatal care

KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICES REGARDING VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY AMONG WOMEN ATTENDING IMAM HUSSEIN MEDICAL CITY IN KARBALA 2018

Objective: Vitamin D deficiency is a global health problem. It is significantly associated with skeletal and non-skeletal problems. Prevention can be maintained mainly by effective sun exposure or supplementation and to lesser extent by dietary intake. To determine the magnitude of knowledge and practice of women towards vitamin D deficiency. Methods: A cross-sectional study, purposive sample of 442 women were approached who attended consultants’ clinics of Imam Hussein Medical City in Karbala. Data collection done between March 2 and June 30, 2018 through direct interviews using a special questionnaire prepared for the purpose of the study. Results: Less than half (45.2%) of the women had heard about vitamin D; their source of information was from relatives and friends then from health care provider. The mean score for the participants’ knowledge about VDD was 4.25 out of 9.0 (47%). It has a significant association with higher educational levels and urban residence. There is no significant difference regarding age, marital status or occupation. The mean score for the participants’ practice about vitamin D deficiency was 2.53 out of 5 (50.71%). There is no influence of practice score by socio-demographic factors. Conclusion: Overall knowledge towards vitamin D deficiency was suboptimal. Improving practices towards VD is directly related to increase knowledge about it that indicates the need to increase public awareness about the problem, encourage appropriate way of sun exposure, consumption of vitamin D rich food and taking supplementation when sun exposure is difficult

The behaviour of different design of flexible force sensor based velostat during implementation of static load with different contact area

Great attention has been given to flexible force sensors and the materials that have been used as a sensing material by studying their properties and evaluate their behaviours with different types of loads. Velostat is one of the most promising sensing materials that has been widely studied and evaluated for different applications due to their distinct traits of flexibility, suitable cost as well as their ability to cover the wearable applications. This work makes focus on the behaviour of Velostat flexible force sensor by measuring the resistivity of the sensor while applying loads with different contact area. Two different designs of sensor have been studied, which are the single output flexible force sensor and multioutput matrix flexible force sensor, by applying loads starting from 0.98 (N) to 9.8 (N) with four compression disc having different diameters. It has been found that the two design behave in opposite manner. The resistance of the single output design decreased as the contact area increased, while the matrix design showed an increasing in the resistance as the contact area increased

Trends and Challenges of Parametric Design Techniques in Design Concepts Evaluation & Development, and its Application in Riyadh

The continuous development and transformation of modeling and design techniques and tools lead to the emergence of more efficient techniques that support the architects through the design process. In light of that, the parametric design field is considered a state-of-art of such techniques that could support architects in making the most suitable and effective design decisions in early design stages by testing a large number of design solutions and alternatives using computational models. When considering the tendency of KSA, within its vision 2030, to digital transformation and increase the digital applications in all fields, the lack of sufficient data about the local market reality related parametric techniques’ availability and applicability of the latest trends and challenges facing its applications is considered an important problem that should be resolved. Such data could support the decision-maker in identifying best priorities and directing the necessary fund to support its application, overcome its important challenges, and get the most of its benefits in developing The field of digital design. This is considered the research gap and the main research incentive of this paper which aims to explore trends of parametric design techniques in evaluating and developing design ideas, the challenges facing its application, and the reality of the availability and applicability of such techniques in Riyadh local market. This is considered as an initiative for future studies that aim to bridge the gap in this field. The research adopted the descriptive analytical approach to achieve its objectives in two parts of this paper: the first went through a literature review to explore parametric design techniques’ trends and challenges facing its application, while the second went through a field survey to explore the reality of the availability and applicability of such techniques. It is expected that the paper results and conclusions will contribute to encouraging future studies in this direction to bridge its research gap and achieve the goals of the Kingdome vision 2030 related to the digital transformation

The Influence of Personal and Organizational Factors on Researchers’ Attitudes towards Sustainable Research Productivity in Saudi Universities

This paper studies organisational and personal factors affecting the behaviour of academic staff in Saudi universities. It seeks to investigate the beliefs of academic staff regarding the use of ICT and other factors to enhance the productivity of their scientific research. Also, this study aims to improve the sustainability of publication in Saudi universities. ICT includes using the library system for accessing research repository databases such as Science Direct, Web of Science, Scopus, etc. and other factors. The authors also developed the Importance Performance Map Analysis (IPMA) for these factors in order to provide guidelines for Saudi universities to build university systems to manage and measure the research productivity of academic staff. In summary, this research identifies factors critical to enhancing research productivity in Saudi universities. This will help to improve the sustainability of publication in Saudi universities. By enhancing the sustainability of publication, the reputation of Saudi universities will be improved and the reputation of academic staff in Saudi universities. As well the sustainability of publication will assist the promote of Saudi academic staff. The results show that personal factors such as personal use of ICT and organisational factors such as job satisfaction, university policy, IT funding, international collaboration and the level of ICT use in the university have positive effects on scientific research productivity among academic staff at Saudi universities.The authors wish to thank Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) under Research University Grant Vot-20H04, Malaysia Research University Network (MRUN) Vot 4L876 and the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) Vot 5F073 supported under Ministry of Education Malaysia for the completion of the research. The work is partially supported by the project of the Grant Agency of Excellence, University of Hradec Kralove, FIM, Czech Republic (ID: 2206-2019) and by the SPEV project, University of Hradec Kralove, FIM, Czech Republic (ID: 2103–2019). This project is also partially supported by the grant TIN2016-75850-R from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness with FEDER funds

Multi-constraints based deep learning model for automated segmentation and diagnosis of coronary artery disease in X-ray angiographic images

Background: The detection of coronary artery disease (CAD) from the X-ray coronary angiography is a crucial process which is hindered by various issues such as presence of noise, insufficient contrast of the input images along with the uncertainties caused by the motion due to respiration and variation of angles of vessels. Methods: In this article, an Automated Segmentation and Diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease (ASCARIS) model is proposed in order to overcome the prevailing challenges in detection of CAD from the X-ray images. Initially, the preprocessing of the input images was carried out by using the modified wiener filter for the removal of both internal and external noise pixels from the images. Then, the enhancement of contrast was carried out by utilizing the optimized maximum principal curvature to preserve the edge information thereby contributing to increasing the segmentation accuracy. Further, the binarization of enhanced images was executed by the means of OTSU thresholding. The segmentation of coronary arteries was performed by implementing the Attention-based Nested U-Net, in which the attention estimator was incorporated to overcome the difficulties caused by intersections and overlapped arteries. The increased segmentation accuracy was achieved by performing angle estimation. Finally, the VGG-16 based architecture was implemented to extract threefold features from the segmented image to perform classification of X-ray images into normal and abnormal classes. Results: The experimentation of the proposed ASCARIS model was carried out in the MATLAB R2020a simulation tool and the evaluation of the proposed model was compared with several existing approaches in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, revised contrast to noise ratio, mean square error, dice coefficient, Jaccard similarity, Hausdorff distance, Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), segmentation accuracy and ROC curve. Discussion: The results obtained conclude that the proposed model outperforms the existing approaches in all the evaluation metrics thereby achieving optimized classification of CAD. The proposed method removes the large number of background artifacts and obtains a better vascular structure