PROSPECTS OF WALKABILITY IN CITY NEIGHBORHOODSCASE STUDY: THE CITY CENTER OF ALEXANDRIA

Sustainability, livability and quality of life have become widely discussed issues in the literature of urban planning and design. This study primarily aims to investigate the concept of walkability as a part of livability. To draw a wider theoretical framework for this study, it first seeks to define the terms of ‘livability’ and ‘quality of life’. Then, it focuses on the concept of ‘walkability’ as one of the major components of these terms and as a measurable notion in urban design. Thus, this research seeks to identify a set of indicators of walkability in public spaces to be used for the application which can directly impact on the design quality of urban space. Third, this research focuses on Alexandria city center which has been in the process of deterioration due to various current urban strategies. As the case studies, it examines Saad Zaghloul Street at Ramleh Station District by using the set of walkability measures. It investigates the walkability quality of four different zones of the street, and identifies their walkability capacities, problems and potentials. Finally, it suggests the policy and practical solutions on the design of these public spaces that will not only improve the walkability capacity of this street, but also be helpful for the revitalization of the historic city center

Investigating the Factors Influencing Students’ Acceptance of Esports as a Career Choice

Esports is a digital entertainment and gained its popularity due to technological advancements, technology accessibility and elite competition. Esports is recognized as a formal industry and a form of occupation and led to higher career opportunities. In 2019, more than 11,000 job vacancies were advertised and are projected to reach more than 22,500 jobs in 2020. This study investigates the relationship between Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), Social Influence (SI) & Facilitating Conditions (FC), towards esports Career Choice Intention (CCI) among 365 private university students. The regression analysis shows that PE, EE, SI and FC have a significant impact on CCI. The independent variables indicate that the five factors significantly predict CCI - F (5, 359) = 40.562, p<0.001. And the R2 result of 0.603 postulated that the model explains 60.3% of the variance in CCI. The research on esports as a career choice intention is few and limits the number of referencing. Possible future research on the key success factors of esports companies could illustrate the industry's career progression. Alternatively, industry players should look at the allocation of budgeting and resources, and its relationship with attitude towards esports

Preparation and Evaluation of Different Liquisolid Compacts Containing Model Hydrophobic Drugs: Norfloxacin and CCinnarizine

The project started with studying the unique characteristics of the zwitterionic drug (norfloxacin), considered as an example of very slightly water soluble drug. The study focused on the effects of its chemical structure on its interaction with surfactants (PEG200 and Synperonic TM PE/L-61) in liquisolid systems and, consequently, on its release into water dissolution medium. The next stage was an approach to solve the problems of the dissolution, compressibility and flowability of norfloxacin liquisolid formulations through adding water as a liquid binder to make wet granulated liquisolid formulations. The water in the liquisolid formulations works as a liquid binder to the carrier and coating particles, creating a wider space inside their structure, which allows the amount of the liquid vehicle (PEG200 and Synperonic TM PE/L-61) to increase inside the formulations. This feature reflects positively on the flowability (decreasing the angle of the slide), compressibility (increasing the load factor) and the dissolution behaviour of norfloxacin (increasing drug release to more than 20%). Another liquid binder (PVP) was used in the wet granulations and a comparison was made between PVP solutions, water and classical liquisolid formulations in terms of dissolutions, flowability, compressibility, DSC thermographs and FTIR spectra. The successful application of wet granulation techniques with liquisolid formulations was tested with a very hydrophobic drug (cinnarizine). Due to its hydrophobicity, traditional mixing of surfactants and the drug particles did not improve its dissolution in water medium, although the solubility was relatively high. ii The methodology was again applied to investigate how the dissolution of cinnarizine altered with several different types of surfactants. The results lead to a change from traditional mixing to a self-nano emulsifying drug delivery system (SNEDD). Optimization to select a suitable oil (Capmul® MCM EP), surfactant (Kolliphor® RH40) and co-surfactant (PEG400) was found to depend initially on the solubility of cinnarizine. Further optimisation identified the relative percentages (66.6:16.6:16.6 for oil, surfactant and co-surfactant, respectively) and the drug concentration required for the SNEDD (6.0% w/w) was found to depend on the mixture experimental design, using dissolution trends as an indicator. Finally, the selected SNEDD system was converted to a liquisolid system using the water granulation technique to make tablets with acceptable compressibility and flowability. Due to the negative effect of coating material (Cab-O-Sil® M-5P) on the dissolution behaviour, a new method was developed to determine the compressibility load factor using a central composite design and response surface methodology. The predicted model was validated and the accuracy was over 95%, allowing it to be used for preparation of the SNEDDs. The new preparations were compared to tablets from the commercial sources. The new formulations show significant enhancement in the percentage of the drug releases in distilled water dissolution medium

Application of general multilevel factorial design with formulation of fast disintegrating tablets containing croscaremellose sodium and Disintequick MCC-25

Despite the popularity of orally fast disintegrating tablets (FDTs), their formulation can sometimes be challenging, producing tablets with either poor mechanical properties or high disintegration times. The aim of this research was to enhance the properties of FDTs produced by direct compression to have both sufficient hardness to withstand manual handling, and rapid disintegration time. General multilevel factorial design was applied to optimise and evaluate main and interaction effects of independent variables (i) disintegrant concentration, (ii) % filler (Disintequick MCC-25) to mannitol on the responses hardness, tensile strength and disintegration time. In this experiment mannitol was used as a diluent, Disintequick MCC-25 (to best of our knowledge there is no publication available yet for its use with FDTs) was termed in this study as a filler and croscaremellose sodium was used as the superdisintegrant. Seven formulations were prepared following a progressive two-stage approach. Each stage involved the change in the ratio of excipients (Mannitol:Filler) (1:0), (1:0.25), (1:0.50), (1:1), (0.50:1), (0.25:1), (0:1) w/w and concentration of superdisintegrant (1%, 3%, 5%, 7%, 10% w/w). All FDTs were tested for different parameters such as diameter, hardness, tensile strength, thickness, friability and disintegration time. The results of multiple linear regression analysis show a good degree of correlation between experimental (R2:0.84, 0.94, 0.91) and predicted response (R2:0.83, 0.96, 0.95) for hardness, tensile strength and disintegration time respectively. The optimum formulations (regarding disintegration time with acceptable hardness and friability properties) consisted of: (i) 5% w/w disintegrant and 20% w/w filler to mannitol, showing a disintegration time of 30 s, a hardness of 66.6 N (6.8 kg/cm2) and friability of 2.2%; (ii) 7% or 10% w/w disintegrant with 33.33% w/w filler to mannitol, showing disintegration time of 84 s (for 7% disintegrant) and 107 s (for 10% disintegrant), hardness of 73.86 N (for 7% disintegrant) and 72.68 N (for 10% disintegrant) and friability of 1.44 (for 7% disintegrant) and 1.15% (for 10% disintegrant)

Perancangan Interface Aplikasi Pengaduan Masyarakat Kepada Kepolisian

Based on the results of the analysis conducted by the researchers, there are many unpredictable things like traffic accidents, robbery, theft case and others. This study aims to facilitate the community in reporting the unexpected events of each individual. The designed app will later give you an idea of which system will be used by the community to report instances that are experienced easily and quickly. This research uses prototyping method. This research is done by collecting the data needed to create an application design that can be used to disrupt the application. Data obtained for further processing can be obtained so that a design can be used as a picture when the application will be implemented

GOM: New Genetic Optimizing Model for broadcasting tree in MANET

Data broadcasting in a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is the main method of information dissemination in many applications, in particular for sending critical information to all hosts. Finding an optimal broadcast tree in such networks is a challenging task due to the broadcast storm problem. The aim of this work is to propose a new genetic model using a fitness function with the primary goal of finding an optimal broadcast tree. Our new method, called Genetic Optimisation Model (GOM) alleviates the broadcast storm problem to a great extent as the experimental simulations result in efficient broadcast tree with minimal flood and minimal hops. The result of this model also shows that it has the ability to give different optimal solutions according to the nature of the network. © 2010 IEEE

The electric location-routing problem with heterogeneous fleet: Formulation and Benders decomposition approach

In this paper, we focus on a problem that requires the location of recharging stations and the routingof electric vehicles in a goods distribution system. The goods are disseminated from a depot anddistributed to the customers via a heterogeneous fleet of electric vehicles with limited capacity.Differently from the classical vehicle routing problem, the vehicles have battery restrictions thatneed to be recharged at some stations if a trip is longer than their range. The problem reducesto finding the optimal locations of the recharging stations and their number to minimize the totalcost, which includes the routing cost, the recharging cost, and the fixed costs of opening stationsand operating vehicles. We propose a novel mathematical formulation and an efficient Bendersdecomposition algorithm embedded into a two-phase general framework to solve this environmentallogistics problem. Phase I solves a restricted problem to provide an upper bound for the originalproblem which is later solved in Phase II. Between the two phases, an intermediate processingprocedure is introduced to reduce the computations of the Phase II problem. This is achieved bya combination of the Phase I upper bound and several lower bounds obtained via exploiting theunderlying network structure. Our approach solves the problem in a general setting with nonidentical stations and vehicles by allowing multiple visits to the stations and partial recharging.The computational study provides both managerial and methodological insights.Keywords: Recharging Station Location, Electric Vehicle Routing, Environmental Logistics,Integer Programming, Benders Decompositio

Cytotoxicity, Morphology and Chemical Composition of Two Luting Cements: An in Vitro Study

Objective: To assess the cytotoxicity, surface morphology, elemental compositions and chemical characterization of two commonly used luting cement. Material and Methods: The two luting types of cement used were Elite Cement® and Hy-Bond Resiglass®. Freshly mixed (n=6) and set form (n=6) of each cement was placed in medium to obtain extracts. The extract from each sample was exposed to L929 mouse fibroblasts (1x104cells/well). Alamar Blue Assay assessed cell viability. Surface morphology and elemental composition were evaluated using scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy. The chemical characterization was performed by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. One-way ANOVA and post-hoc Tukey analysis were conducted to assess results. Results: Hy-Bond Resiglass® was the more cytotoxic of the two types of cement in both freshly mixed (68.10 +5.16; p<0.05) and set state (87.58 +4.86; p<0.05), compared to Elite Cement® both freshly mixed (77.01 +5.45; p<0.05) and set state (89.39 +5.66; p<0.05). Scanning electron microscopy revealed a more irregular and porous structure in Hy-Bond Resiglass® compared to Elite Cement®. Similarly, intense peaks of aluminium, tungsten and fluorine were observed in energy dispersive spectroscopy in Hy-Bond Resiglass. Conclusion: All these three elements (aluminium, tungsten and fluorine) have cytotoxic potential. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy revealed the presence of hydroxyethyl methacrylate in Hy-Bond Resiglass®, which has a cytotoxic potential

Integrated use of polyphosphate and P-solubilizing bacteria enhanced P use efficiency and growth performance of durum wheat

Coupling phosphate-solubilizing bacteria (PSB) with P fertilizers, including polyphosphates (PolyP), was reported as eco-efficient approach to enhance P use efficiency. Although PSB have been recently reported to hydrolyze PolyP, the plant growth promoting mechanisms of PolyP-PSB co-application were not yet uncovered. This study aims to evaluate the effect of a PSB consortium (PSBCs) on growth, P use efficiency (PUE), and wheat yield parameters under PolyP (PolyB) application. Co-application of PolyB-PSBCs significantly enhanced wheat growth at 75 days after sowing (DAS) compared to 30 DAS. A significant increase in shoot dry biomass (47%), shoot inorganic P content (222%), PUE (91%), and root P absorption efficiency (RPAE, 99%) was noted compared to unfertilized plants. Similarly, the PolyB-PSBCs co-application enhanced morphological root traits at 30 DAS, while acid phosphatase activities (root and rhizosphere), RPAE, and PUE were significantly increased at 75 DAS. The improved wheat P acquisition could be attributed to a lower investment in root biomass production, and significant induction of acid phosphatase activity in roots and rhizosphere soil under PolyB-PSBCs co-application. Consequently, the PolyB-PSBCs co-application significantly improved aboveground performance, which is reflected by increased shoot nutrient contents (P 300%, K 65%), dry weight (54%), and number (50%) of spikes. Altogether, this study provides relevant evidence that co-application of PolyP-PSBCs can be an integrated and environmentally preferred P fertilization approach owing to the dual effects of PolyP and PSBCs on wheat PUE