Physical Sciences and Engineering

The presence of large quantities of toxic metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, zinc or others, poses serious health risks to humans, and this threat puts the scientific community under pressure to develop new methods to detect and eliminate toxic contaminants from wastewaters in efficient and economically viable ways. Industrial and agricultural effluents are a major cause of heavy-metal contamination, thus the removal and recovery of heavy metals from effluent streams is essential to the protection of the environment.

ZnO is a wide band-gap (3.37 eV) II–VI compound semiconductor with hexagonal wurtzite structure. Zinc oxide films were deposited by electrode position, containing very low concentrations of sodium citrate and 30% hydrogen peroxide. Ammonium hydroxide is added to control the reaction. The structural analysis were initially studied with X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The average grain size is measured to be 48nm.

Rice husk is a removal waste from its grain that can be used as an absorber in the distillation process using solar energy (sunlight) to convert seawater into clean water. This process will be supported by carrying out necessary study on the material properties to be used as the absorbent which is made of rice husk briquettes. The chemical composition of rice husk obtained after the process comparing to before the process of distillation using SEM. The study using SEM, there is an increase before and after the process distillation.

The aim of this paper, is to apply a new method called Variation Iteration perturbation method ((VIM)) to porous medium equation. This method is a combination of the new integral “Variation Iteration” and the perturbation method. The nonlinear term can be easily handled by perturbation method. The porous medium equations have importance in engineering and sciences and constitute a good model for many systems in various fields. Some cases of the porous medium equation are solved as examples to illustrate ability and reliability of mixture of Variation Iteration and perturbation method.

In this paper we introduce a brief review about Box-Jenkins models. These models provide a very good method to forecast for stationary and non-stationary time series. Box and Jenkins technique is used to find the best model for inflation rates in Sudan. To achieve this objective, a series of inflation rates ranged from 1998 to 2013 were obtained from the annual reports of the Central Bank of Sudan. The estimation concludes that the most proper time series model to forecast the inflation rate in Sudan is the AR (1), MA (3) model.

Labour productivity output in civil engineering construction projects is an important aspect of civil engineering profession world-wide over many centuries. The use of civil engineering construction materials plays 60% role, while labour productivity output take 40% of the construction projects execution in construction industry. This account for the reason why multi-national companies spend huge sum of money every year to train and retain labour work force that is being employed for daily execution of activities that are carryout within the organization.

Interaction of H2O molecule and BN fullerene like structures was studied based on the density functional theory. The H2O molecule is adsorbed on the surface of BN fullerene like structures. All calculations were performed using DFT within M062X method and has been widely used in the nanostructure studies. 6-311G** all electron basis sets were used for the optimization, frontier molecular orbital (FMO) analyses, and energy calculations.

This paper explores the application of Islamic concept of Hibah Mudarabah in managing waqf commercial properties in the state of Kedah, Malaysia as a wealth redistribution mechanism instead of the present welfare mechanism role. In the past, the traditional practice of waqf properties is that pieces of lands were handed over to mosques in owners’ neighbourhood for waqf uses and the State Islamic religious affairs council was the trustee.

The mudstone of Badong formation (T2b) is taken as the research object about its shear creep properties with shear creep test. Relation between shear creep, shear creep rate and different normal stresses are firstly concerned. Besides, the fast-shear and shear creep tests determine its long-term strength and shear strength indicators C, φ. Moreover, linear fit relationship τ=A+Bσ (A,B are constants) is obtained which subjects to Mohr-Coulomb criterion.

Self-compacting, or “self-consolidating” concrete (SCC) was first developed in Japan in the early nineties. Substantial research was carried out with regard to the properties of SCC. Because of the well-controlled conditions, the introduction of SCC in the precast concrete industry was successful. With regard to the application in situ, the development is slower, because of the sensitivity of the product. In this paper the mechanical properties of SCC in comparison to conventional concrete are discussed.