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 …

The United States (US) as the second leading economy in global ecological pollution has become a fertile ground for a rigorous analysis of the ecological neutrality using load capacity factor (LCF) and carbon-based consumption (CCO2). This is important for the global drive of achieving environmental sustainability by 2050. The LCF is one of the most comprehensive ecological proxies that incorporate the biocapacity and ecological footprint. In this context, this research examines the effect of natural resources, technological innovation, renewable energy and financial globalization on ecological neutrality in the US for the date spanning from 1990 to 2021. Using the novel augmented auto-regressive distributive lag (AARDL) model, the empirical findings of this study indicate that (i) natural resources, renewable energy, and technological innovation promote ecological neutrality by increasing LCF and decreasing CCO2 emissions; (ii) financial globalization and economic growth mitigate the LCF and increase CCO2 emissions; and (iii) a causal effect is observed among technological innovation, natural resources, renewable energy, CCO2 and LCF. In light of the findings, this study recommends several crucial measures for ecological neutrality targets set out in sustainable development goals (SDGs) 7 and 13, respectively.

The study aimed to present the first record of insect families in Farwa Island. Farwa Island is the largest and most important island in Libya; located in Northern west part of Libya in the Mediterranean, its insect fauna is poorly studied. Short time intensive collection of insect samples was conducted in four areas (mouth of the valley, bay of containers, center of the Island, and Ras-Attalgha) in February, March and April 2021. Different methods were used for insect collection, sorting, preservation and later identification to the lowest taxonomic level and verification. 9 orders, 31 families, 40 genera and 58 insect species were collected in the study; the center of the Island had the highest numerical density and diversity of insect fauna due to its diverse vegetation compared to other areas. Diverse suitable habitats and absent insect control measures provided suitable environmental conditions for insects breeding, feeding and hiding from enemies. This study constitutes the first comprehensive survey of insect fauna on Farwa Island and adds significant value to the ongoing assessment of insect diversity in Libya. A long-term study has to be conducted to investigate detailed information about the abundance and diversity of insects and other arthropods on Farwa Island.

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].

Heavy metals can be released from cooking stewpots into food, causing food contamination and posing a risk to human health. This research study investigated the release of heavy metals into food from stewpot cookers used in Gharyan, Libya. As well as, investigating the effect of scratches, acidic food, and storage on the concentrations of those metals. Eight new and used cooking stewpots (with scratches) made of: (Tefal, stainless steel, copper and aluminum) were collected, and then fresh tomato juice was cooked in these stewpots and left in the refrigerator for six days, the samples were digested and analyzed by atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS) to measure the concentration of the heavy metals: (cadmium, lead, iron, copper and zinc). Results showed that cadmium and lead concentrations were less than the detection limit of the AAS instrument, except for one sample (old Tefal stewpot with scratches), in which the lead concentration was (0.046ppm). The concentration of iron, copper and zinc in the samples was less than the maximum limit allowed by WHO/FAO; except for one sample in which the iron concentration exceeded that value (old copper pot with scratches) and its value was (2.892ppm). The results of the descriptive statistical analysis showed that the average concentration of iron (0.493 ppm) was higher than that of zinc and copper (0.054 ppm), (0.016 ppm), respectively. In addition, the rate of leakage of those elements from old (scratched) cookware was higher than that from the new ones made from the same material, and the concentration of these elements increases significantly when these stewpots contain scratches, since that increases the rate of leakage of those metals, especially in acidic food such as tomatoes.

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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