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.

Laminated glass is a composite structure consisting of a polymeric interlayer (e.g., polyvinyl butyral PVB) sandwiched between two glass plies. Due to the increasing use of laminated glass (LG) in advanced industries such as automotive sectors, it is of much importance to investigate the fracture behavior of such structures. One of the most critical steps in outlining the fracture behavior of laminated glass is the accurate determination of the fracture energy of the interlayer, usually, polyvinyl butyral (PVB), which is obtained from experimental methods. So far, various laboratory samples have been presented to measure the fracture energy of laminated glass, each of which has its advantages and limitations. In this paper, a new loading setup is proposed for the determination of mixed-mode I/II fracture energy in a rectangular-shape laboratory sample of laminated glass. The loading setup consists of a rectangular beam under a four-point bending which has been analyzed by the commercial ABAQUS software package. By utilizing this specimen, the fracture energy of the combined modes from pure mode I to pure mode II in the PVB interlayer can be measured. The proposed geometry here is simpler than other available geometries in the literature and also it does not require a complex loading mechanism. The effects of crack length ratio and also the support distance on fracture parameters such as and are well investigated.

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.

This paper describes an experimental program developed to investigate non-bearing spliced composite short column connections made of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) that are subjected to axial loading. This study provides aspects such as the load-bearing capacity of the connection, failure modes, load distribution in the connection, displacement in the joint, stiffness, and compressive strength. The design of the joint in this study that connects two 350mm GFRP H-sections to form a short column connection is based on euro codes BS EN 1990 and BS EN 1991, which are used to design steel splicing connections for beams and columns. Four design specifications models are made depending on the positioning of the cover plates in the inner flange, outer flange, and web region of the H-sections to examine the requirement of a specific cover plate, and the H-sections are bolted to each other using M8 8.8 grade steel bolts. The samples tested in this study indicated a dominant failure in the flange region, with model-4 providing 92.83% compressive strength when compared to an uncut GFRP short column.

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.

The purpose of this overview is to discover materials commonly used in the automotive industry and provide an overview of optimized composites to reduce weight, cost, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The cost of carbon fiber, Al and Mg lightweight composites is much higher than conventional materials. It is therefore important for research and development in the area of reducing costs, increasing recyclability, enabling integration and maximizing the fuel economy benefits of automobiles. In order to meet these characteristics, natural fibers have better properties and, in addition to being environmentally friendly, will become the material of choice for the future automotive industry. Composites can reduce weight by 10-60%. Researchers are already working with bio composites, investigating not only the economic aspects, but also the properties and associated manufacturing processes for environmentally friendly transportation and CO2 reduction.

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.