Solar energy, known for its abundance and sustainability, stands out as a preferred renewable energy source. Net-zero energy buildings (NZEBs) technology for an elementary school in Dayton, Ohio, was implemented using the f-chart, phi method, photovoltaic system, and the CombiSystem TRNSYS executable. The solar fraction achieved for the system was 56% utilizing the f-chart and phi method. The project required 181 collectors for heating and cooling loads and 578 photovoltaic collectors for electricity generation. Using the f-chart and phi method, the simple payback period was calculated to be 5 years. The optimal storage tank design was determined to be a 120-60 gallon configuration, achieving a solar fraction of 62.45%. The photovoltaic system generated energy valued at $191,135 annually, meeting the requirements for a net-zero energy building. This design provides clean energy without environmental pollution or CO₂ emissions. The total project cost amounted to $275,393.99, making it the most cost-effective design compared to alternative designs incorporating photovoltaic systems for cooling loads. 

Electrospun fibers membrane is considered an efficient drug carrier for transdermal drug delivery due to its breathability and high drug loading percentage, compared with coating film. However, pollution and safety risk caused by the use of organic solvents during the solution electrospinning process limit its industrialization and direct application in the biomedical field. Herein, a fiber membrane containing tandospirone was prepared using the melt electrospinning process and to be used for sustained drug release. The process of fiber preparation is an eco‐friendly and safe process due to the characteristics of solvent‐free. The in vitro drug release results showed that the fiber membranes containing tandospirone had slower initial drug release and higher end drug release compared with coating film containing tandospirone. The sustained‐release property can be attributed to the crystalline structure of fibers and …

The new era of distance education opens up a new problem space for researchers to redefine educational needs. The COVID-19 lockdown with its tremendous consequences has affected the way of thinking and acting and has highlighted the merits of distance education. One of the most important of these problems is the inability of the lecturer technically to manage and present remote lectures, which resulted in the student's dissatisfaction with distance education. In this research, we have studied how to facilitate the work of the lecturer, who suffers from many problems, including the technical issues that need technical competencies in the field of information technology and modern technologies used in distance education, including the simulation system and displaying the system via the Internet, studying how to help the student also, in receiving distance education techniques and dealing with the programs used by the lecturer in skillfully presenting educational curricula. For that, the research focused on studying how to use a team to facilitate this work called the E-Learning Facilitator Team. This team plays a vital role in developing and maintaining an online program that is effective, and smooth, and that will support the realization of the planned learning outcomes. Faculty delivering courses online must be more than transmitters of knowledge; they must become facilitators of learning. Some highly seasoned instructors from the traditional on-ground environment will quickly adapt to the online model, while others may find the transition challenging at first [10].

The electrospun yarn for sutures has gained worldwide attention due to its fine fibers that resemble the extracellular matrix and its abundant functional sites. However, the use of a large number of toxic solvents poses safety risks and environmental pollution during production, making it challenging to directly apply electrospun yarn in the biomedical field. In this study, an environmentally friendly and safe method without toxic solvents was proposed for preparing antibacterial PLA ultrafine fiber sutures. This method involves melt electrospinning, hot‐stretching, low‐temperature plasma treatment, and chitosan grafting. The PLA ultrafine fiber sutures exhibit a high tensile strength which is 2.04 N before knotting and 1.57 N after knotting. The suture diameter is 118.7 μm and average fiber diameter is 1.72 μm. Chitosan grafted on the fiber surface provides excellent antibacterial properties for the sutures, with …

An optimized image watermarking technique based on LU factorization and entropy analysis in combination with lifting wavelet transform and discrete cosine transform is presented in this paper. At first, the original image is decomposed by a 2-level lifting wavelet transform for obtaining the coefficients of a high-frequency subband followed by discrete cosine transform. Afterward, non-overlapping blocks are obtained by dividing the coefficients of discrete cosine transform whereas LU factorization is applied to each nonoverlapping blocks based on pseudo-random sequences. Then, the watermark is embedded into the first row, the first column element of the upper triangular matrix of LU factorization. The normalized cross-correlation (NC), and the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) are used to evaluate the invisibility and robustness of the presented technique. The experimental results have indicated that the presented technique fulfills all watermarking requirements in terms of invisibility, robustness, security, and capacity. The comparison with the existing scheme has shown that the proposed watermarking technique has a superior performance in terms of invisibility than the existing scheme.

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