In this work, accelerated thermal aging at different temperatures was performed on high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles and specimens for food packaging. The degradation of HDPE was followed macroscopically by tensile and compression tests to evaluate the decrease in mechanical properties. The data obtained from these tests are used to calculate a new static damage law and the life fraction of this polymer. A prediction of the lifetime of HDPE was determined by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) in dynamic mode. The evolution of the crystallinity rate during accelerated thermal aging was carried out using FOURIER transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR). The results obtained show a remarkable degradation of the mechanical properties in traction and compression by calculation of the static damage, and the physical and chemical properties by the analysis of the rate of crystallinity as well as the prediction by the law of Arrhenius.

COVID-19 detection through radiological examination is favoured since it is fast and produces more accurate results than the laboratory approach. However, when it has infected many people and put a strain on the healthcare system, the need for fast, automatic COVID-19 detection in patients has become critical. This study proposes to detect COVID-19 from chest X-ray (CXR) images with a machine learning approach. The main contributions of this paper are to compare two powerful deep learning models, i.e., convolutional neural networks (CNN) and the combination of CNN and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). In the combination model, CNN is recommended for feature extraction, and COVID-19 is classified using the features of LSTM. The dataset used in this study amounted to 4,095 CXR images, consisting of 1,400 images of normal conditions, 1,350 images of COVID-19, and 1,345 images of pneumonia. Both CNN and CNN-LSTM were executed in a similar experimental setup and evaluated using a confusion matrix. The experiment results provide evidence that the CNN-LTSM is better than the CNN deep learning model, with an overall accuracy of about 98.78%. Furthermore, it has a precision and recall of 99% and 98%, respectively. These findings will be valuable in the fast and accurate detection of COVID-19.

Bin packing problem (BPP) is a combinatorial optimization problem with a wide range of applications in fields such as financial budgeting, load balancing, project management, supply chain management. Harmony search algorithm (HSA) is widely used for various real-world and engineering problems due to its simplicity and efficient problem solving capability. Literature shows that basic HSA needs improvement in search capability as the performance of the algorithm degrades with increase in the problem complexity. This paper presents HSA with improved exploration and exploitation capability coupled with local iterative search based on random swap operator for solving BPP. The study uses the despotism based approach presented by Yadav et al. (2012) [Yadav P., Kumar R., Panda S.K., Chang, C. S. (2012). An intelligent tuned harmony search algorithm for optimisation. Information Sciences, 196, 47-72.] to divide Harmony memory (HM) into two categories which helps to maintain balance between exploration and exploitation. Secondly, local iterative search explores multiple neighborhoods by exponentially swapping components of solution vectors. A problem specific HM representation, HM re-initialization strategy and two adaptive PAR strategies are tested. The performance of proposed HSA is evaluated on 180 benchmark instances which consists of 100, 200 and 500 objects. Evaluation metrics such as best, mean, success rate, acceleration rate and improvement measures are used to compare HSA variations. The performance of the HSA with iterative local search outperforms other two variations of HSA.

Due to the advances in wireless network environments, consumers/end-user behaviors continue to expand in cyberspace. Similarly, university students (i.e. universities’ consumers) can easily shift from one university to another. In recent years, decision-makers in educational organizations have faced multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems in e-service adoption in order to improve quality standards and maintain students’ retention in highly competitive education environments. Generally, many required criteria in MCDM cannot be evaluated accurately since accurate data cannot be obtained from the decision makers’ assessments. Thus, this research aims to propose a decision-making model for identifying the factors that highly impact on e-service adoption in educational organizations. This new model combined the fuzzy Decision MAking Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (fuzzy DEMATEL) and fuzzy Techniques for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (fuzzy TOPSIS) to weight the interactions among the factors which were defined from a comprehensive review of literature and to determine the relative importance of these factors. The findings from our new proposed model: fuzzy DEMATEL-TOPSIS showed that environmental factors are the most important for effective e-service adoption among educational organizations in India. The proposed decision making model could guide educational organizations to improve their decisions related to technology adoption in their organizations. The conclusions and practical insights gleaned from this research could also hopefully be useful to school authorities in assisting with the adoption, acceptance, and usage of e-services.

A practical distribution system that arises in the context of delivering liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) through cylinders is considered in this study. To meet all the challenging constraints, the model is explicitly considered as a simultaneous pickup and delivery single commodity truncated vehicle routing problem with the homogeneous fleet of vehicles. The aim of this problem is to find the optimal routes for the set of vehicles locating at the distributing agency (DA), which offers simultaneous pickup and delivery operations over single commodity (i.e. LPG cylinders) to a fixed subset (need not serve all delivery centers) of delivery centers at rural level. The model is designed using zero-one integer linear programming. For proper treatment of the present model, an exact Lexi-search algorithm (LSA) has been developed. A comparative study is performed between the LSA and existing results for the relaxed version of the present model. Further, the efficiency of the LSA is tested through numerical experiments over small and medium CVRP benchmark test instances. The extensive computational results have shown that the LSA is productive and revealed that the real solutions have more consistent than the integral solutions in the presence of truncation constraint.

All projects require a structure to meet project requirements and achieve established goals. This framework is called project management. Therefore, project management plays an important role in national development and economic growth. Project management includes various knowledge areas such as project integration management, project scope management, project schedule management, etc. The article focuses on the resource-constrained project scheduling known as problem so- called the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP). The RCPSP is a part of schedule management. The standard RCPSP has two important constraints, resource constraints and precedence relationships of activities during project scheduling. The objective of the problem is to optimize and minimize the project duration, subject to the above constraints. In this paper, we develop a convolutional neural network approach to solve the standard single mode RCPSP. The advantage of this algorithm over conventional methods such as metaheuristics is that it does not need to generate many solutions or populations. In this paper, the serial schedule generation scheme (SSGS) is used to schedule the project activities using an evolved convolutional neural network (CNN) as a tool to select an appropriate priority rule to filter out a candidate activity. The evolved CNN learns according to the eight project parameters, namely network complexity, resource factor, resource strength, average work per activity, etc. The above parameters are the inputs of the network and are recalculated at each step of the project planning. Moreover, the developed network has priority rules which are the outputs of the developed neural network. Therefore, after the learning process, the network can automatically select an appropriate priority rule to filter an activity from the eligible activities. In this way, the algorithm is able to schedule all project activities according to the given project constraints. Finally, the performance of the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) approach is investigated using standard benchmark problems from PSPLIB in comparison to the MLFNN approach and standard metaheuristics.

Today, improving machine availability is vital for industries to compete in the global market. Spare parts play an essential role in the maintenance and repair of equipment, but planning an extensive network in strategic industries with various spare parts can be very challenging due to the existence of different decision factors. The spare parts supply chain deals with inventory management issues, which necessitates considering the related decisions such as determining the stock level and order quantity. Moreover, demand uncertainty and long supply time make decision-making more complex. This paper presents a repair and supply planning model for repairable spare parts while considering a modified formulation of demand uncertainty to minimize costs. The model determines the optimal stock level, lateral transshipment, assignment of spare part orders to suppliers, equipment to repair centers, and the number of intervals over the planning horizon used in demand estimation. This research contributes to the literature by integrating recent decisions, using demand approximation by piecewise linearization, and considering backorder in warehouses evaluated by queuing models. A hybrid approach, including heuristic and genetic algorithms, is used to optimize the model using data from an oil company. The results show that using piecewise linearization and integrated repair and supply planning decisions optimizes costs and improves performance. Also, the availability is affected by the demand estimation, which necessitates precision prediction.

In the present work, synthesis of phthalimide and naphthalimide derived Biginelli compounds was performed. Allylation of phthalic & naphthalic anhydride, followed by ozonolysis resulted in the formation of N-phathalimido/naphpthalimido acetaldehyde (2 and 7). These aldehydes were subjected to Biginelli reaction using urea/thiourea and divergent β-keto esters in the presence of sulfated tin oxide (5 mol%) as catalyst in ethanol reflux to produce the corresponding dihydropyrimidinone compounds (5a-j and 8a-h). Additionally, both their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory functions were carried out. Compounds 5e, 5f, 5i, and 5j have shown potent to moderate potent activity for both antioxidant and anti-inflamamtory activities when compared to standard. Compounds 8c and 8g have shown potent antioxidant and anti-inflamamtory activities when compared to other compounds.

This paper examines the role of vision as a mediating variable of the relationship between organizational factors and IoT adoption in audit firms in the US. Using a combination of analyses based on structural equation modeling (SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN) technology as the primary research methodology. Seven hypotheses were accepted, including one related to the impact of vision on IoT adoption. In general, all accepted hypotheses had a positive effect on IoT adoption. In addition to the direct positive impact of vision on IoT technology adoption, the magnitude of that effect varied depending on the context of each hypothesis. Drawing evidence from the results, this study demonstrates that vision was a partial mediating variable in the relationship between the organizational factor and IoT adoption. As a result, the model can help audit firms adopt IoT technology successfully. On the other hand, it makes essential recommendations for implementing IoT technology in light of the role that vision plays as a mediating variable in this model. The Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework and Diffusion of Innovation theory (DOI) are combined with the vision to improve model predictive power.

Plant growth regulators (PGR), also known as plant hormones, are a variety of chemical compounds that have a significant impact on the development and differentiation of plant cells. This work aimed to study the effect of various combinations of Plant Growth Regulators (PGRs) for example [6-Benzyladenine (BA), 2,4-dichlorophenoxyaceticg acid (2,4-D), Naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) and indol-3-ylbutyric acid (IBA)] on callus induction and shoot regeneration from anther culture of S1 progenies resulted from Manfalouty cultivar open pollinated. The results showed that highest value of percentage of callus induction was 10.6% on MS medium supplemented with 1 mg / l of NAA and 2 mg / l of BA also highest value of percentage of shoot formation 60 % on MS medium supplemented with 3 mg/ l of NAA and 2 mg /l of BA.