A joke is something that is said, written, or done to cause amusement or laughter. It could be a short piece or a long narrative joke, but either way it ends in a punchline, where the joke contains a second conflicting meaning. Sometimes when we read a joke, we understand it directly and fully, but this is not always the case. When a writer writes a joke, he intends to manipulate the reader in a way that the reader doesn’t get the joke at once. He does that by using pun on words or any other word play. We, as listeners to the joke, try to get the message depending mostly on the tone of the voice, in addition to other factors concerning vocabulary and grammar. But as readers of the joke, we need more other factors in order to get to the intended meaning of the joke. One of these important factors is punctuation. Punctuation is the use of certain signs which help understand a piece of writing. It is used to create clarity, sense, and stress in contexts, because using the correct punctuation helps us to convey our thoughts as we intend them to. So is the use of punctuation marks in writing a joke is essential in order to understand it? Or is it just helpful sometimes? What happens if the writer doesn’t use punctuation marks when writing the joke? Would this affect us in getting the meaning of the joke? In this study we try to answer these rising questions.
Total dissolved solids are at the top of the parameters list of water quality that requires investigations for planning and management, especially for irrigation and drinking purposes. If the quality of water is sufficiently predictable, then appropriate management is possible. In the current study, Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models were used as indicators of water quality and for the prediction of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) along the Tigris River, in Baghdad city. To build these models five water parameters were selected from the intakes of four water treatment plants on the Tigris River, for the period between 2013 and 2017. The selected water parameters were Total Dissolved Solids (TDS
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Aim: The goal of this research was to study the influence of Er,Cr:YSGG laser at short pulse duration (60 µsec) on the number of streptococcus mutans bacteria in vitro.
Material and Methods: twenty-eight extracted third molars free of caries, cracks, and other irregularities were used. For the testing of the materials, both the agar well technique and a tooth cavity model were employed. The agar wells of plates that had been inoculated with Streptococcus mutans previously were stuffed with the test materials, in order to conduct the tests. The zones of inhibition were assessed using millimeter measurements, after an incubation period of 48 hours .In order to a
... Show MoreThe cost of pile foundations is part of the super structure cost, and it became necessary to reduce this cost by studying the pile types then decision-making in the selection of the optimal pile type in terms of cost and time of production and quality .So The main objective of this study is to solve the time–cost–quality trade-off (TCQT) problem by finding an optimal pile type with the target of "minimizing" cost and time while "maximizing" quality. There are many types In the world of piles but in this paper, the researcher proposed five pile types, one of them is not a traditional, and developed a model for the problem and then employed particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, as one of evolutionary algorithms with t
... Show MoreThis paper reports test results and describes a numerical investigation of the effectiveness of using carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) fabrics for strengthening concrete cylinders that have been undamaged and damaged due to heating under preload. The purpose of this research was to investigate whether there is any difference in the performance of CFRP-wrapped cylinders if the wrapping is done under preload, and those for which neither heating, cooling nor wrapping was done under preload. The cylinders were exposed to 30% of maximum load at ambient temperature during heating and cooling before being wrapped under preload. Of 18 Ø 100 × 200 mm identical cylinders, 6 were left as control samples without heating, 12 were exposed t
... Show MoreIn this study, a genetic algorithm (GA) is used to detect damage in curved beam model, stiffness as well as mass matrices of the curved beam elements is formulated using Hamilton's principle. Each node of the curved beam element possesses seven degrees of freedom including the warping degree of freedom. The curved beam element had been derived based on the Kang and Yoo’s thin-walled curved beam theory. The identification of damage is formulated as an optimization problem, binary and continuous genetic algorithms
(BGA, CGA) are used to detect and locate the damage using two objective functions (change in natural frequencies, Modal Assurance Criterion MAC). The results show the objective function based on change in natural frequency i
The present work reports on the performance of three types of nanofiltration membranes in the removal of highly polluting and toxic lead (Pb2+) and cadmium (Cd2+) from single and binary salt aqueous solutions simulating real wastewaters. The effect of the operating variables (pH (5.5-6.5), types of NF membrane and initial ions concentration (10-250 ppm)) on the separation process and water flux was investigated. It was observed that the rejection efficiency increased with increasing pH of solution and decreasing the initial metal ions concentrations. While the flux decreased with increasing pH of solution and increasing initial metal ions concentrations. The maximum rejection of lead and cadmium ion
... Show MoreA simple and rapid high performance liquid chromatographic with fluorescence detection method for the determination of the aflatoxin B1, B2, G1 and G2 in peanuts, rice and chilli was developed. The sample was extracted using acetonitrile:water (90:10, v/v%) and then purified by using ISOLUTE multimode solid phase extraction. After the pre-column derivatisation, the analytes were separated within 3.7 min using Chromolith performance RP-18e (100–4.6 mm) monolithic column. To assess the possible effects of endogenous components in the food items, matrix-matched calibration was used for the quantification and validation. The recoveries of aflatoxins that were spiked into food samples were 86.38–104.5% and RSDs were <4.4%. The method was
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