Bagasse and wheat bran are agrowaste and cause different environmental problems. These compounds contain highly valuable compounds that can be recycled by microorganisms. This work was carried out to evaluate the effect of fermentation by Bacillus subtilis on biological activity and chemical components of bagasse and wheat bran. The results demonstrated the antimicrobial activity of fermented wheat bran and bagasse against eight selected microbial pathogens exhibited high activity of fermented wheat bran and mix, fermented bagasse showed less antimicrobial activity. Fermented wheat bran and bagasse samples had the highest antioxidant activity values (16.45 and 14.94 %) in comparison with the unfermented samples (6.20 and 3.97 %) respectively. Concentration of protein, ash, oil, and carbohydrates in fermented wheat bran were 5.34 %, 7.30%, 2.36% and 10.6%, whereas in bagasse they were 2.45%, 1.68%, 1.51% and 3.25 respectively. The moisture contents in bagasse 73.1% were more than in wheat bran 63.88%.

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the efficiency of Islamic Rural Banks (BPRS) and analyze the factors that determine them using a two-stage approach to Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). DEA in this study focuses on the production, intermediation, and inefficiency causes. This research was done on BPRS across Indonesia. The data were taken from a financial report for the 2013-2021 period. The source of the data was a publication from the Financial Services Authority of Indonesia. The data were analyzed using the non-parametric approach with a two-stage DEA method. The input variables were personnel costs, fixed assets, and third-party funds. The result shows that Revenue Sharing, ROA, and Growth have a significant positive effect on DEA. BOPO and inflation have a positive but insignificant effect on DEA. While NPF and FDR have negative but insignificant effects on DEA. Then CAR has a negative and not significant effect on DEA. It also shows that the variables of Revenue Sharing, NPF, ROA, CAR, FDR, BOPO growth, and inflation have a simultaneous effect on DEA.

The present investigation was carried out to prepare gluten free biscuits with high quality for celiac patients. The chemical analysis as minerals, amino acids of raw materials was estimated. Also, chemical composition for gluten free biscuits blends was determined and results showed that protein, ether extract and fibre contents were higher in all samples prepared using cassava flour, quinoa flour and sweet potato flour than those samples prepared using cassava flour. Volume, length, spread ratio and width of gluten free biscuit blends B2, B3, B4 and B5 decreased but thickness and bulk density increased compared to cassava flour biscuits B1. All sensory characteristics of free gluten biscuits samples B2, B3, B4 and B5 prepared using cassava flour, quinoa flour, and sweet potato flour were somewhat higher than biscuits prepared from cassava flour B1. Finally, blends B2 and B5 had higher scores in sensorial evaluation, chemical analysis, and physical attributes.

Fires are devastating risky events in forests, having a negative effect on resources, biodiversity, economics, animal life, and putting people in danger. The goal of this study is to use geospatial techniques to identify areas in Jordan that are at risk of forest fires. The research area extends 50 kilometers north and 15 kilometers east from the Dead Sea. The forest fire risk zones map was developed using six factors: land cover class, aspect, proximity to settlements, elevation, slope, and proximity to roads. All of the factors have been selected based on their fire sensitivity or capacity to cause fire. In this study, a Turkish model with fuzzy logic and Analytical hierarchy analysis (AHP) was utilized to classify the area into five categories of risk ranging from very low to very high. According to the findings, approximately 12.12% of the study area is classified as very low risk, 25.54 % is classified as medium risk, while 12.84% is classified as very high risk. Over the last ten years, the map has been confirmed by prior fire occurrences using data from civil defense archives. This conclusion was very useful in gaining an understanding of the geographical distribution of fire-vulnerable zones. The research found that the GIS approach combined with AHP and fuzzy logic is a useful tool for estimating such kinds of maps.

The synthesis, anticancer and antimicrobial properties of novel N-aryl-2-(5-aryltetrazol-2-yl)acetamides were discussed. Novel N-aryl-2H-tetrazoles were synthesized and modified in order to obtain the compounds with a satisfactory pharmacological profile. The structures of target substances were confirmed by using ¹H spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and elemental analysis. Anticancer activity screening was carried out within the framework of Developmental Therapeutic Program of the National Cancer Institute's (DTP, NCI, Bethesda, Maryland, USA). The compounds with significant levels of anticancer activities have been found that can be used for further optimization. The antimicrobial activity of the synthesized substances was evaluated by the value of the MIC and minimum fungicidal and bactericidal concentration. The findings exhibited that the compounds possessed moderate antimicrobial potential.

Project management has a fundamental role in national development, industrial development, and economic growth. Schedule management is also one of the knowledge areas of project management, which includes the processes employed to manage the timely completion of the project. This paper deals with the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP), which is a part of schedule management. The objective of the problem is to optimize and minimize the project duration while constraining the resource quantities during project scheduling. There are two important constraints in this problem, namely resource constraints and precedence relationships of activities during project scheduling. Many methods such as exact, heuristic, and meta-heuristic have been developed by researchers to solve the problem, but there is a lack of investigation of the problem using methods such as neural networks and machine learning. In this article, we develop a multi-layer feed-forward neural network (MLFNN) to solve the standard single- mode RCPSP. The advantage of this method over evolutionary methods or metaheuristics is that it is not necessary to generate numerous solutions or populations. The developed MLFNN learns based on eight project parameters, namely network complexity, resource factor, resource strength, average work per activity, percentage of remaining work, etc., which are calculated at each step of project scheduling, and identified 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 out an unscheduled activity from the list of eligible activities and schedule all activities of the project according to the given project constraints. Finally, we investigate the performance of the presented approach using the standard benchmark problems from PSPLIB.

In developing countries, it still suffers from endless problems regarding wastewater treatment and the problem of choosing the appropriate treatment system due to lack of proper technology and weak economy. This study highlights the maturity oxidation pond (stabilization) of small communities as an effective, low-cost and simple post-treatment technique for treating wastewater before discharging into an aquatic ecosystem. The Rashid plant was cited as a treatment plant in the city of Rashid-ElBeheira Governorate - Egypt as a model plant for applying this technology in treatment of wastewater. This work also includes the studying of the relationship between climatic conditions, physicochemical parameters and biomass of microorganisms to evaluate the efficiency of its performance.

A pine tree, namely Pinus merkusii is an indigenous species from Indonesia which grows extensively in the Island of Java, Sumatera, and Sulawesi. This plant produces both timber and non-timber forest products (TFP and NTFP). Resin or oleum pine resin, as the main NTFP of Pinus merkusii, becomes the raw material for the gum rosin and turpentine oil industry. Globally, Indonesia is ranked 3rd as a producer of pine products after China and Brazil, in which Perhutani as a State Owned Forestry Enterprise plays a major role in this industry. On average, Perhutani manufactures 65,000 tons of gum rosin and 14,000 turpentine oil per year. Entire volume of both pine products is produced by nine factories with various maximum capacities. Therefore, this research aims to measure efficiency and/or inefficiency score of each factory using data envelopment analysis (DEA) method, which is then complemented by a single bootstrap technique with 2.000 iterations to eliminate bias scores. Cost of raw material, labour, energy, and general affairs are employed as input variables, while the output variables are total revenue and production volume. As result, 27.3% inefficiency (efficiency score = 72.7%) is generally found in all Perhutani’s pine chemical factories. To resolve this inefficiency issue, analytical hierarchy process (AHP) pairwise comparison questionnaire is distributed to 13 expert respondents to determine prioritized operational capability to focus on in optimizing efficiency of production performance. Dimensions of Cost, Quality, Flexibility, Innovation, and Sustainability are selected to construct the AHP questionnaires.

Stock is one of the investment assets that has its charm for investors. It is very liquid and has a high rate of return, but it has a high risk. The strategy commonly used to minimize investment risk is to diversify through portfolio formation. A good allocation of funds must be determined in forming an optimal portfolio. In addition, the method of stock selection needs to be considered so the stocks are well diversified and the portfolio developed has good performance. This study aims to compare stock selection between K-Means and Average Linkage clustering approaches in forming an investment portfolio. Clustering analysis is used to group IDX80 stocks based on their attributes. In forming a portfolio with the Mean-VaR model, the stock selection decision criteria used are by selecting stocks with the highest positive returns from each cluster. As a result, the two clustering techniques show the superiority of the Silhouette score for a certain number of clusters, but there are still more advantages in Average Linkage. The portfolio approached by Average Linkage resulted in a better performance than the portfolio approached by K-Means. Therefore, Average Linkage clustering can be used as a better recommendation in decision-making to select stocks so as to produce optimal portfolio performance.

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between a set of banking sector development indicators and interest rate volatility for 12 emerging market countries during the period of 1980-2019. For this purpose, the bounds testing within autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) methodology is employed. The empirical results reveal that the interest rate volatility has negative impacts on the majority of the banking sector development indicators which also play a significant role in dampening the banking sector development path in the long-run. These findings suggest that the banking sectors of emerging countries are vulnerable to interest rate risks. Thus, the results have important implications for policymakers to improve the banking system and to promote economic growth of emerging economies.