Search Results (21,478)

The effect of dietary inclusion of Moringa oleifera leaf powder (MLP) on the growth, meat quality, carcass characteristics, hematobiochemical profile, and cecal bacteria of broiler chicken was investigated in this research trial. In this study, 192-day-old Arbor Acre broiler chicks were assigned in a completely randomized design to three groups: control, antibiotic, and MLP. A standard basal diet was given to the control group, while the antibiotic group received 75 mg/kg chlortetracycline, and the MLP group received 100 mg/kg M. oleifera leaf powder supplemented basal diet. Each group was further divided into eight replicates consisting of eight birds each, and the trial ran for 35 days. Among the groups, the MLP-fed broilers achieved the highest final body weight (FBW), average daily gain (ADG), and average daily feed intake (ADFI). Notably, the FCR for the whole experimental period was lower in the MLP group, indicating a more efficient use of feed for growth. Supplementation of MLP with basal diet significantly increased (p < 0.05) the weight of thighs and drumsticks relative to live weight %, while the spleen and abdominal fat weight (% of live weight) were significantly decreased (p < 0.05). Adding MLP to the diet improved the meat quality of broilers, as indicated by the highest pH of meat at 45 min and the lowest cooking loss (%) observed in this group. MLP exhibited hypocholesterolemic and hypolipidemic effects, with the lowest total cholesterol and triglyceride levels compared to non-supplemented groups. The hematological profile revealed that the MLP group exhibited the highest RBC count and Hb level, while also showing the lowest H/L ratio. Moringa supplementation significantly (p < 0.05) modulated the cecal bacterial population, reducing pathogenic E. coli and Shigella spp. while increasing beneficial Lactobacillus spp. and the total aerobic plate count (TAPC). In conclusion, Moringa oleifera leaf powder (MLP) can be used as a natural feed supplement for promoting the growth, meat quality, healthy blood, and sound health of broilers. Full article

Nowadays, industries across the globe are acknowledging the need for a Net Zero Supply Chain (NZSC) by 2050, particularly within the Manufacturing Supply Chain (MSC) due to its significant contribution to Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Government and regulatory bodies pressure the industry to reduce GHG emissions. Industries focus on cleaner and sustainable production by adopting net zero technique practices. Achieving the net zero goal needs technological integration, such as Caron Capture Technology (CCT) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Are LCA and CCT unlocking the potential for net-zero practices in MSC? This still needs to be answered. Therefore, this study aims to identify and prioritize potential enablers of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to facilitate the NZSC. We identified potential enablers using a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and expert opinion. An empirical study validated these enablers, followed by the application of the “Best-Worst Method (BWM)” to rank them and the “Fuzzy Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (F-DEMATEL)” to identify causal relationships. The outcomes of this study reveal that ‘Energy Management and Emission Reduction’ is the most critical category of enablers, followed by ‘Governance and Collaboration’, ‘Assessment and Digitalization’, and ‘Sustainable Materials and Production’. Outcomes highlight the importance of integrating technological innovations and stakeholder engagement to achieve net-zero goals. The implications of this study provide valuable insights for policymakers and practitioners. By focusing on the prioritized enablers, the manufacturing industry can effectively implement LCA, develop the NZSC business model, and enhance competitiveness in the global market. This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on sustainable manufacturing practices and offers a strategic framework for achieving NZSC by 2050. Full article

Portulaca oleracea L. is a wild edible plant with high potential for exploitation in commercial cropping systems due to its nutritional value and great adaptability to abiotic stress conditions. The present study aimed to investigate the response of purslane plants grown under drought stress conditions (100%, 80%, and 60% of field capacity (FC)) and the implementation of biostimulant amendments (control without amendment, plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), mycorrhiza, and effective microorganisms (EMs)) for two consecutive years. In the two-year experiment, the greatest height was recorded in plants grown under no-stress conditions and inoculated with PGPR. The highest branch number, and fresh and dry weight of aboveground and underground parts were observed under no-stress conditions at the mycorrhiza treatment. Moreover, mycorrhiza application in plants growing under 100% FC resulted in the highest N, P, total carbohydrates, and vitamin C and the lowest nitrate and proline contents in leaves. Purslane plants grown under 100% FC and inoculated with PGPR treatment resulted in the highest K and total chlorophyll leaf contents. Additionally, growing plants under mild drought stress (80% FC) combined with biostimulant application (e.g., inoculation with mycorrhiza, PGPR, and EM) may improve plant growth characteristics and mitigate negative stress effects. In general, the applied biostimulant amendments alleviated the adverse effects of drought on plant growth and leaf chemical composition indicating the importance of sustainable strategies to achieve high yield and sufficient quality within the climate change scenario. Full article

In the present paper, we propose new generalized classes of (p,q)-starlike and (p,q)-convex functions. These classes are introduced by making use of a (p,q)-derivative operator. There are established Fekete–Szegö estimates $|a_3-\mu a_2^2|$ for functions belonging to the newly introduced subclasses. Certain subclasses of analytic univalent functions associated with quasi-subordination are defined. Full article

In this work, we introduce a new definition for the fractional differential operator that generalizes several well-known fractional differential operators. In fact, we introduce the notion of the $p$-proportional $\omega$-weighted $\kappa$-Hilfer derivative includes an exponential function, $D_{a,\lambda }^{\sigma ,\rho ,p,\kappa ,\omega }$, and then we consider a non-instantaneous impulse differential inclusion containing $D_{a,\lambda }^{\sigma ,\rho ,p,\kappa ,\omega }$ with order $\sigma \in (1,2)$ and of kind $\rho \in [0,1]$ in Banach spaces. We deduce the relevant relationship between any solution to the studied problem and the integral equation that corresponds to it, and then, by using an appropriate fixed-point theorem for multi-valued functions, we give two results for the existence of these solutions. In the first result, we show the compactness of the solution set. Next, we introduce the concept of the $(p,\omega ,\kappa )$-generalized Ulam-Hyeres stability of solutions, and, using the properties of the multi-valued weakly Picard operator, we present a result regarding the $(p,\omega ,\kappa )$-generalized Ulam-Rassias stability of the objective problem. Since many fractional differential operators are particular cases of the operator $D_{a,\lambda }^{\sigma ,\rho ,p,\kappa ,\omega }$, our work generalizes a number of recent findings. In addition, there are no past works on this kind of fractional differential inclusion, so this work is original and enjoyable. In the last section, we present examples to support our findings. Full article

Background and Objectives: Compared to other subjects, obese people have inferior trunk muscle endurance and balance. A modern method of neuro-muscular training called whole body vibration (WBV) may improve trunk muscle endurance and balance. This study evaluates the impact of a 4-week WBV program on trunk endurance and balance in obese female students. Materials and Methods: Sixty participants from 18 to 25 years of age and with BMI values ≥ 30 were randomly distributed into two equal groups: Group A (WBV group), who received 4 min of WBV, and Group B (sham WBV group), who received WBV with a turn-off device. The training was conducted two days/week for six weeks. Trunk endurance was evaluated using the Sorensen Test (ST) and Trunk Flexor Endurance Test (TFET). The Single-Leg Test (SLT) was used to assess static balance, while the Biodex Stability System measured dynamic balance. Results: The current study demonstrated no significant differences (p > 0.05) in pre-treatment variables between Groups A and B. Post-treatment, Group A showed a significantly higher duration of the Sorensen test, TFET and SLS than Group B (p < 0.001). Moreover, Group A showed significantly lower dynamic balance (p < 0.001) than Group B. Conclusions: WBV has a short-term effect on trunk endurance and balance in obese female students. WBV can be added to the rehabilitation program for obese subjects with deficits in trunk endurance and balance. Full article

Consistent with Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SGG 5) concerned with gender equality, this study examines the relationship between Board Gender Diversity (BGD) and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) performance. In addition, it investigates the moderating role of governmental ownership concerning this relation by focusing on an emerging market. A sample of 71 Egyptian-listed companies on EGX100 during 2014–2019 has been examined. Both univariate and multivariate analyses are conducted to examine the relationship between BGD and ESG performance and the effect of governmental ownership on this relationship using OLS, 2SLS, and Logistic regressions. The results revealed a positive relation between BGD and ESG performance. In addition, we found that governmental ownership has a moderating effect on the relationship between BGD and ESG performance. This finding indicates that the effect of BGD on ESG performance in emerging markets is conditional on the governmental ownership, which provides a fertile environment for BGD to support ESG issues. The results add to the growing interest regarding the implications of BGD and governmental ownership for ESG performance in emerging economies. This study has significant implications for regulatory bodies, firms, and investors in emerging markets such as Egypt. It ensures that board gender diversity can enhance ESG performance in the case of governmental ownership. In addition, it highlighted the value of enforceable regulations on overseeing private firms’ ESG performance. Full article

Around the world, groundwater supply is critical for vital needs such as drinking and irrigation. This work investigates groundwater in the carbonate aquifer of the Middle Miocene in the east El Minia area, Egypt. In this regard, thirty-two groundwater samples were collected. The water samples were analyzed for Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, Na⁺, K⁺, Cl⁻, SO₄²⁻, NO₃⁻, CO₂⁻, HCO₃⁻, Fe, Mn, Cd, As, Cr, Cu, and Pb. Groundwater has been evaluated using two methods, which are water quality index (WQI) and health risk assessment (HRA). The predominant groundwater is soft water, and the samples range in salinity from fresh to slightly salty. The groundwater mostly falls into the alkaline water type. All the groundwater samples under study are deemed low quality for human consumption due to water contamination. Fe, Mn, Cd, Cu, and Pb have high HQnc values, which can result in non-carcinogenic health issues in adults, while Mn, Cu, and Pb can give rise to non-carcinogenic health issues in children. Full article

Bee products, abundant in bioactive ingredients, have been utilized in both traditional and contemporary medicine. Their antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory properties make them valuable for food, preservation, and cosmetics applications. Honeybees are a vast reservoir of potentially beneficial products such as honey, bee pollen, bee bread, beeswax, bee venom, and royal jelly. These products are rich in metabolites vital to human health, including proteins, amino acids, peptides, enzymes, sugars, vitamins, polyphenols, flavonoids, and minerals. The advancement of nanotechnology has led to a continuous search for new natural sources that can facilitate the easy, low-cost, and eco-friendly synthesis of nanomaterials. Nanoparticles (NPs) are actively synthesized using honeybee products, which serve dual purposes in preventive and interceptive treatment strategies due to their richness in essential metabolites. This review aims to highlight the potential role of bee products in this line and their applications as catalysts and food preservatives and to point out their anticancer, antibacterial, antifungal, and antioxidant underlying impacts. The research used several online databases, namely Google Scholar, Science Direct, and Sci Finder. The overall findings suggest that these bee-derived substances exhibit remarkable properties, making them promising candidates for the economical and eco-friendly production of NPs. Full article

The interest in hydrogen is rapidly expanding because of rising greenhouse gas emissions and the depletion of fossil resources. The current work focuses on employing affordable Al alloys for hydrogen production and storage to identify the most efficient alloy that performs best in each situation. In the first part of this work, hydrogen was generated from water electrolysis. The Al alloys that are being examined as electrodes in a water electrolyzer are 1050-T0, 5052-T0, 6061-T0, 6061-T6, 7075-T0, 7075-T6, and 7075-T7. The flow rate of hydrogen produced, energy consumption, and electrolyzer efficiency were measured at a constant voltage of 9 volts to identify the Al alloy that produces a greater hydrogen flow rate at higher process efficiency. The influence of the electrode surface area and water electrolysis temperature were also studied. The second part of this study examines these Al alloys’ resistance to hydrogen embrittlement for applications involving compressed hydrogen gas storage, whether they are utilized as the primary vessel in Type 1 pressure vessels or as liners in Type 2 or Type 3 pressure vessels. Al alloys underwent electrochemical charging by hydrogen and Charpy impact testing, after which a scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to investigate the fracture surfaces of both uncharged and H-charged specimens. The structural constituents of the studied alloys were examined using X-ray diffraction analysis and were correlated to the alloys’ performance. Sensitivity analysis revealed that the water electrolysis temperature, electrode surface area, and electrode material type ranked from the highest to lowest in terms of their influence on improving the efficiency of the hydrogen production process. The 6061-T0 Al alloy demonstrated the best performance in both hydrogen production and storage applications at a reasonable material cost. Full article

Occasionally intravenous insertion forms a challenge to a number of patients. Inserting an IV needle is a difficult task that requires aot of skill. At the moment, only doctors and medical personnel are allowed to do this because it requires finding the right vein, inserting the needle properly, and carefully injecting fluids or drawing out blood. Even for trained professionals, this can be done incorrectly, which can cause bleeding, infection, or damage to the vein. It is especially difficult to do this on children, elderly people, and people with certain skin conditions. In these cases, the veins are harder to see, so it isessikely to be done correctly the first time and may cause blood clots. In this research, aow-cost embedded system utilizing Near-Infrared (NIR)ight technology is developed, and two novel approaches are proposed to detect and select the best candidate veins. The two approaches utilize multiple computer vision tools and are based on contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE). The accuracy of the proposed algorithm is 91.3% with an average 1.4 s processing time on Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. Full article

High salinity reduces agriculture production and quality, negatively affecting the global economy. Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) enhance plant metabolism and abiotic stress tolerance. This study investigated the effects of 2 g/L foliar Zinc oxide NPs on Zea mays L. plants to ameliorate 150 mM NaCl-induced salt stress. After precipitation, ZnO-NPs were examined by UV–visible spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, scanning transmission electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray, and particle size distribution. This study examined plant height, stem diameter (width), area of leaves, chlorophyll levels, hydrolyzable sugars, free amino acids, protein, proline, hydrogen peroxide, and malondialdehyde. Gas chromatographic analysis quantified long-chain fatty acids, and following harvest, leaves, stalks, cobs, seeds, and seeds per row were weighed. The leaves’ acid and neutral detergent fibers were measured along with the seeds’ starch, fat, and protein. Plant growth and chlorophyll concentration decreased under salt stress. All treatments showed significant changes in maize plant growth and development after applying zinc oxide NPs. ZnO-NPs increased chlorophyll and lowered stress. ZnO-NPs enhanced the ability of maize plants to withstand the adverse conditions of saline soils or low-quality irrigation water. This field study investigated the effect of zinc oxide nanoparticles on maize plant leaves when saline water is utilized for growth season water. This study also examined how this foliar treatment affected plant biochemistry, morphology, fatty acid synthesis, and crop production when NaCl is present and when it is not. Full article

The monitoring of wind turbine (WT) systems allows operators to maximize their performance, consequently minimizing untimely shutdowns and related hazard situations while maximizing their efficiency. Indeed, the rational monitoring of WT ensures the identification of the main sources of risks at a proper time, such as internal or external failures, hence leading to an increase in their prevention by limiting the faults’ occurrence regarding the different components of wind turbines, achieving production objectives. In this context, the present paper develops a practical monitoring approach using a numerical fault-detection process for the pitch system based on a benchmark wind turbine (WT) model with the main aim of improving safety and security performance. Therefore, the proposed fault-diagnosis procedure deals with eventual faults occurring in the actuators and sensors of the pitch system. In this proposed approach, a simple, logical process is used to generate the correct residuals as fault information based on the redundancy in the actuators and sensors of the pitch sub-systems. The obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness of this proposed process for ensuring the tasks of the fault diagnosis and condition monitoring of the WT systems, and it can be a promising approach for avoiding major damage in such systems, leading to their operational stability and improved reliability and availability. Full article

Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) harness comprehensive knowledge spanning text, images, and audio to adeptly tackle complex problems. This study explores the ability of MLLMs in visually solving the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) and Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem (mTSP) using images that portray point distributions on a two-dimensional plane. We introduce a novel approach employing multiple specialized agents within the MLLM framework, each dedicated to optimizing solutions for these combinatorial challenges. We benchmarked our multi-agent model solutions against the Google OR tools, which served as the baseline for comparison. The results demonstrated that both multi-agent models—Multi-Agent 1, which includes the initializer, critic, and scorer agents, and Multi-Agent 2, which comprises only the initializer and critic agents—significantly improved the solution quality for TSP and mTSP problems. Multi-Agent 1 excelled in environments requiring detailed route refinement and evaluation, providing a robust framework for sophisticated optimizations. In contrast, Multi-Agent 2, focusing on iterative refinements by the initializer and critic, proved effective for rapid decision-making scenarios. These experiments yield promising outcomes, showcasing the robust visual reasoning capabilities of MLLMs in addressing diverse combinatorial problems. The findings underscore the potential of MLLMs as powerful tools in computational optimization, offering insights that could inspire further advancements in this promising field. Full article

This study investigates the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on reducing accounting errors from two distinct angles: that of accounting software developers and of certified public accountants. We employ a questionnaire-based approach informed by prior research and validated through pilot testing. Our findings reveal significant benefits for software developers. AI effectively addresses various accounting errors, including tax rate discrepancies, cutoff period inaccuracies, principal violations, concealed transactions, mathematical mistakes, and manipulation errors. However, when considering users, AI’s effectiveness varies. While it successfully mitigates certain errors, such as those related to principles, it falls short in eliminating mathematical errors. This research contributes fresh insights into the role of AI in accounting within emerging markets, enhancing our understanding of its potential and limitations. Full article