System integration of hydrogen energy technologies using renewable energy resources

The objective of this work has two major tasks that investigation the use of CHHP system at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) campus and studying solid waste as renewable source of energy: current and future possibility in Libya. Task one has three major topics. In Topic I, Design of Combined Hydrogen, Heat and Power (CHHP) system for the campus using local resources and treated biogas can be used to generate CHHP using a Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell (MCFC). In Topic II, hydrogen recovery and cleaning system, Heat recovery and electric power usage, hydrogen compression, storage, and dispensing/distribution system, electricity use and economic benefits of the system in operation, and thermal use. In Topic III, utilization of hydrogen production, hydrogen end-uses, CHHP hydrogen output, and hydrogen application consider but not used in the design. In task 2, generation of solid waste in Libya, overview of Waste-to-energy (WTE) conversions, solid waste management, WTE benefits and challenges in Libya. Results for Tasks I and II have been presented. --Abstract, page iv

Review: Recent Directions in ECG-FPGA Researches

لقد شهدت السنوات القليلة الماضية اهتماماً متزايداً نحو استخدام مصفوفة البوابات المنطقية القابلة للبرمجة FPGA في التطبيقات المختلفة. لقد أدى التقدم الحاصل في مرونة التعامل مع الموارد بالاضافة الى الزيادة في سرعة الاداء وانخفاض الثمن للـ FPGA وكذلك الاستهلاك القليل للطاقة الى هذا الاهتمام المتزايد بالـ FPGA. ان استخدام الـ FPGA في مجالات الطب والصحة يهدف بشكل عام الى استبدال اجهزة المراقبة الطبية كبيرة الحجم وغالية الثمن باخرى أصغر حجماً مع امكانية تصميمها لكي تكون اجهزة محمولة اعتماداً على مرونة التصميم التي يوفرها الـ FPGA. إنصب الاهتمام في العديد من البحوث الحالية على استخدام نظام FPGA لمعالجة الجوانب المتعلقة بإشارة تخطيط القلب وذلك لتوفير التحسينات في الاداء وزيادة السرعة بالاضافة الى أيجاد وإقتراح افكار جديدة لمثل هذه التطبيقات. ان هذا البحث يوفر نظرة عامة عن الاتجاهات الحالية في انظمة ECG-FPGA.The last few years witnessed an increased interest in utilizing field programmable gate array (FPGA) for a variety of applications. This utilizing derived mostly by the advances in the FPGA flexible resource configuration, increased speed, relatively low cost and low energy consumption. The introduction of FPGA in medicine and health care field aim generally to replace costly and usually bigger medical monitoring and diagnostic equipment with much smaller and possibly portable systems based on FPGA that make use of the design flexibility of FPGA. Many recent researches focus on FPGA systems to deal with the well-known yet very important electrocardiogram (ECG) signal aspects to provide acceleration and improvement in the performance as well as finding and proposing new ideas for such implementations. The recent directions in ECG-FPGA are introduced in this paper

The optical properties of Poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) polymers doped by Potassium Iodide with different thickness

Films of pure Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) doped by potassium iodide (KI) salt with percentages (1%) at different thickness prepared by casting method at room temperature. In order to study the effect of increasing thickness on optical properties, transmission and absorption spectra have been record for five different thicknesses(80,140,210,250,320)µm. The study has been extended to include the changes in the band gap energies, refractive index, extinction coefficient and absorption coefficient with thickness

Efficient systematic turbo polar decoding based on optimized scaling factor and early termination mechanism

In this paper, an efficient early termination (ET) mechanism for systematic turbo-polar code (STPC) based on optimal estimation of scaling factor (SF) is proposed. The gradient of the regression line which best fits the distance between a priori and extrinsic information is used to estimate the SF. The multiplication of the extrinsic information by the proposed SF presents effectiveness in resolving the correlation issue between intrinsic and extrinsic reliability information traded between the two typical parallel concatenated soft-cancellation (SCAN) decoders. It is shown that the SF has improved the conventional STPC by about 0.3 dB with an interleaver length of 64 bits, and about 1 dB over the systematic polar code (SPC) at a bit error rate (BER) of . A new scheme is proposed as a stopping criterion, which is mainly based on the estimated value of SF at the second component decoder and the decoded frozen bits for each decoding iteration. It is shown that the proposed ET results in halving the average number of iterations (ANI) without adding considerable complexity. Moreover, the modified codes present comparable results in terms of BER to the codes that utilize fix number of iterations

Kinetic Study of Air Bubbles-Cetyltrimethylammonium Bromide (CTAB) Surfactant for Recovering Microalgae Biomass in a Foam Flotation Column

Owing to their efficient photosynthesis, microalgae tend to possess superior growth rates and high lipid production, hence their significance to the biofuel sector. The bulk harvesting of microalgae from cultures is a substantial stage in advancing the production of biomass-based fuels. However, a reliable and cost-effective harvesting technology is not yet available. Foam flotation, which is a subcategory of the adsorptive bubble separation process, shows considerable promise for the harvesting and enrichment of microalgae biomass. The available literature indicates that virtually no data has been reported on the flotation kinetics of microalgae. Therefore, to better describe the recovery of microalgae by the flotation process, this work studied the flotation kinetics of the freshwater microalgae Chlorella vulgaris. The recovery of microalgae cells in a batch foam flotation column over time at different operating conditions was fitted to nine flotation kinetic models, including first, fractional, and second order kinetic models; a first order kinetic model with rectangular, exponential, gamma, and sinusoidal distributions of floatabilities; a second order kinetic model with rectangular distribution of floatabilities; a fully mixed reactor; and modified Kelsall flotation kinetic models. Evaluation of the kinetic models showed that the discrete rate constant model (i.e. modified Kelsall kinetic model) fitted the experimental data best. The modified Kelsall model shows the highest values of adjusted R2 (>0.995) and the lowest values of mean squared error (<2.63). Apart from the modified Kelsall model, which has discrete rate constants, no single kinetic model, with or without a continuous distribution, was sufficient to represent the flotation data, and the optimal model may vary under different conditions. More work is recommended using different freshwater and marine microalgae species

Fifth Generation (5G) New Radio (NR) Channel Codes Contenders Based on Field- Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA): A Review Paper

ان الحاجة المتزايدة على الجودة، مثل السرعة العالية والتاخير المنخفض والتغطية الواسعة واستهلاك الطاقة والتكلفة والاتصالات الموثوقة في خدمات الهاتف المحمول والوسائط المتعددة ونقل البيانات تفرض استخدام المتطلبات التقنية المتقدمة في الجيل الخامس (5G) الإذاعة الجديدة (NR). واحدة من أهم الأجزاء في الطبقة المادية للجيل الجديد هي تقنية الترميز لتصحيح الأخطاء. هنالك ثلاثة اشكال مقترحة لتقنيات الترميز المخصصة لقنوات نقل البيانات وقنوات التحكم هي  الترميز التوربيني وفحص التكافؤ المنخفض الكثافة (LDPC) والرموز القطبية. يتم تقييم المنافسة بين هذه الانواع من حيث القدرة على تصحيح الأخطاء والتعقيد الحسابي والمرونة. التوازي والمرونة وسرعة المعالجة العالية لمصفوفة البوابة القابلة للبرمجة الميدانية (FPGA) تجعلها أفضل في النماذج الأولية وتنفيذ الرموز المختلفة. تقدم هذه الورقة دراسة استقصائية للبحوث الحالية التي تتعامل مع تصميم وحدة فك الترميز المستندة إلى FPGA المرتبطة برموز القناة المذكورة سابقًا.The increased demands for quality, like high throughput, low-latency, wide coverage, energy consumption, cost and reliable connections in mobile services, multimedia and data transmission impose the use of advance technical requirements for the next fifth-generation (5G) new radio (NR). One of the most crucial parts in the physical layer of the new generation is the error correction coding technique. Three schemes, namely; Turbo, low density parity check (LDPC), and polar codes are potentially ‎considered as the candidate codes for both data and control channels. The competition is evaluated in terms of error correction capability, computational complexity, and flexibility. The parallelism, flexibility and high processing speed of Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) make it preferable in prototyping and implementation of different codes. This paper presents a survey on the current literatures that deals with FPGA-based decoder design associated with the previously mentioned channel codes

The Effect of RF-Plasma Power on the Growth of III-Nitride Materials

In this study, n-InGaN nanorods were grown directly on p-type Si (111) substrates by plasmaassisted molecular beam epitaxy (PA-MBE). The crystal structure is investigated using the reflection of high-energy electron diffraction patterns. Additionally, the morphology and optical properties of the InGaN nanorods were investigated using both scanning electron microscopy and room temperature photoluminescence spectra. The results showed that, the PL peak position shifted toward lower energy by increasing plasma power due to increase in In concentration within InGaN nanorods. It can be observed that, through using optimum growth conditions, a uniform indium up to 34% can be achieved with no phase split-up or indium isolation. Thus, none of the mobile In-droplets on the surface were observed

Variety of Antibody Responses to BNT162b2 and BBIBP-CorV Vaccinations Against COVID-19 Infections in Baghdad and Fallujah, Iraq

The huge impact of COVID-19 worldwide led to the rapid development of vaccines with inadequate data about its longevity, effectivity, and safety. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines available in Iraq and to measure longevity of created antibody response among different time points of both Pfizer-BioNTech and Sinopharm vaccines in Baghdad and Fallujah, Iraq. A two-axis method was used: the first was cross sectional study on the vaccination state for COVID-19 in Baghdad and Fallujah, using an online survey contained questions about city, vaccine type, side effect, pre and post infections, and chronic diseases. The second part involved a prospective observational study of the vaccine’s immunological effectiveness and stability in 60 serum samples from completely vaccinated individuals (second dose) of Pfizer or Sinopharm along different time points (1 - 6 months) by measuring the SARS-CoV-2 Anti-RBD-IgG concentration and evaluating its correlation with pre-infection with COVID-19. Among different types of vaccines available in Iraq, people in Baghdad and Fallujah preferred Pfizer vaccine over other available types, particularly those with chronic diseases. No statistically significant difference was noticed between IgG concentrations at different points of time, IgG concentrations in Pfizer vaccinated individuals were more elevated than Sinopharm, and all of Pfizer vaccinated people showed positive results. Our study established a synergistic impact between recent COVID-19 infection and vaccination, leading to increased levels of IgG antibodies, notably in individuals who received the Pfizer vaccine. Additionally, our findings demonstrate that IgG concentrations remained stable in vaccinated individuals even six months after completing the vaccination with second dose

Segmentation and measurement of lung pathological changes for COVID-19 diagnosis based on computed tomography

Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) spread internationally in early 2020, resulting from an existential health disaster. Automatic detecting of pulmonary infections based on computed tomography (CT) images has a huge potential for enhancing the traditional healthcare strategy for treating COVID-19. CT imaging is essential for diagnosis, the process of assessment, and the staging of COVID-19 infection. The detection in association with computed tomography faces many problems, including the high variability, and low density between the infection and normal tissues. Processing is used to solve a variety of diagnostic tasks, including highlighting and contrasting things of interest while taking color-coding into account. In addition, an evaluation is carried out using the relevant criteria for determining the alterations nature and improving a visibility of pathological changes and an accuracy of the X-ray diagnostic report. It is proposed that pre-processing methods for a series of dynamic images be used for these objectives. The lungs are segmented and parts of probable disease are identified using the wavelet transform and the Otsu threshold value. Delta maps and maps created with the Shearlet transform that have contrasting color coding are used to visualize and select features (markers). The efficiency of the suggested combination of approaches for investigating the variability of the internal geometric features (markers) of the object of interest in the photographs is demonstrated by analyzing the experimental and clinical material done in the work. The suggested system indicated that the total average coefficient obtained 97.64% regarding automatic and manual infection sectors, while the Jaccard similarity coefficient achieved 96.73% related to the segmentation of tumor and region infected by COVID-19

Medicinal Plants Traditionally Used in the Management of COVID-19 in Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Coronaviruses are infectious respiratory tract illnesses, but they can also affect the digestive tract and infect both humans and animals. The new coronavirus results in complicated health problems all over the world. The most urgent concern of all researchers around the world has been the treatment of the virus. The following study aimed to use quantitative ethnobotany to help scientist in addressing the deadly virus. Expert sampling method was adopted with the aid of an in-depth interview guide. Thirty-nine respondents were interviewed. Eighty-one medicinal plant species from 35 families were documented. Males 25 (64.1%) constitute the greater percentage of the total respondents. Majority of the respondents had formal education. Eighty-one medicinal plant species from 35 families were documented. Leaves are the most utilized 25.8 followed by seed 17.7 and fruits 12.1%, respectively. Relative frequency of citation ranged from 0.5 to 0.9, whereas the FL value ranged from 0.4 to 0.85, revealing how effective the documented plant species are in the management of COVID-19 in the region. A greater amount of research into documented medicinal plants is warranted because of the high likelihood that they contain many active ingredients