Reduced graphene oxide-supported nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI/rGO) composites were synthesized in the present study by chemical deposition method and were then characterized by various methods, such as Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The nZVI/rGO composites prepared were utilized for Cd(II) removal from aqueous solutions in batch mo...

The objective of this study is to optimize the performance of discrete production systems by integration of computer simulation, design of experiment (DOE), and Tabu search (TS). Optimizing performance of a steelmaking workshop was considered as the case of this study, but it could be used to optimize the throughput of other production system. The simulation model is built by considering all ma...

The preset response surface methodology (RSM) designs are commonly used in a wide range of process and design optimization applications. Although they offer ease of implementation and good performance, they are not sufficiently adaptive to reduce the required number of experiments and thus are not cost effective for applications with high cost of experimentation. We propose an efficient adaptiv...

The geometry of engineering systems affects their performances. For this reason, the shape of engineering systems needs to be optimized in the initial design stage. However, engineering system design problems consist of multi-objective optimization and the performance analysis using commercial code or numerical analysis is generally time-consuming. To solve these problems, many engineers perfor...

Protein Z-dependent protease inhibitor (ZPI) is a 72 kDa single-chain serpin which inhibits the activated coagulation factors X and XI. Two non-sense polymorphisms of ZPI, R67X and W303X, were recently identified, and were linked with a prothrombotic state. Here, we investigated the association of the R67X (728C>T) and W303X (1438G>A) variants in the ZPI gene with recurrent spontaneous miscarri...

An experiment was conducted to determine whether brewers rice can replace all corn in diets for swine and reduce fecal excretion of Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorus (P) without compromising performance and carcass quality of growing-finishing pigs. Sixteen Yorkshire x Duroc x Hampshire crosses (BW = 77±2.5 kg) were randomly assigned to either corn/soybean meal (CSM; control) or brewers rice/soybean ...

The major impact of the livestock sector on the environment may be reduced by feeding agricultural co-products to animals. Since the last decade, co-products from biodiesel production, such as rapeseed meal (RSM), became increasingly available in Europe. Consequently, an increase in RSM content in livestock diets was observed at the expense of soybean meal (SBM) content. Cultivation of SBM is a...

The aim of the present experiment was to examine the effect of different levels of rapeseed meal (RSM) and sunflower meal (SFM) and enzyme combination (endoxylanase and β-glucanase) on the production performance, carcass quality, gizzard development and digesta viscosity of broiler chickens. The experimental design was a 3×2 factorial arrangement of treatments evaluating three diet types contai...

Maize-soybean meal diets with 0, 100, 200 and 300 g/kg double zero rapeseed meal (‘00’ RSM) with and without an enzyme mixture (xylanase, pectinase, cellulase) at a level of 1.6 g/kg were evaluated with 624 day-old broiler chicks for 5 weeks. The birds were randomly allocated to eight dietary treatments with three replicates of 26 birds each. Average daily gain (ADG) and feed intake (FI) were r...