Background: The isthmus is a difficult area in the root canal complex to manage. The research aimed to evaluate the efficiency of three different obturation techniques (lateral condensation, EandQ (thermoplasticized gutta percha system) and Soft Core (thermoplasticized core carrier gutta percha system)) to obturate the isthmus area of roots prepared by two different instrumentation techniques (rotary ProTaper universal and ProTaper Next systems). Material and method: Sixty freshly extracted teeth were randomly divided into two main groups (A and B) of 30 teeth each. Group A was prepared by rotary ProTaper Universal whereas group B was prepared by ProTaper Next system. Each main group was then randomly subdivided into three subgroups of 10 t

The effect of UV-light on the tensile properties of pure PC has been studied. It was shown that irradiation of PC undergo a drop in the tensile properties of 30 hour of exposure. The results of irradiated samples shows that the addition of ZnO and TiO2 with different percentages (0.5, 1, 1.5 %) will reduce the Young modulus and ultimate stress of PC/ZnO ,PC/ TiO2 composites

Background: Nutrition can affect the development and integrity of the oral cavity as well as the progression of oral diseases such as dental caries which was the most predominant and wide spread not life threatening human diseases especially in developing countries as in Iraq. This study was conducted to assess the occurrence, prevalence and severity of dental caries condition and their relations to nutritional status among intermediate schools females in Al-Najaf city in Iraq. Materials and methods: This study was conducted among intermediate schools females aged 13, 14 and15 years old and the total sample consisted of 754 students. The assessment of nutritional status was performed using body mass index (BMI) following Centers for Diseas

Metaheuristics under the swarm intelligence (SI) class have proven to be efficient and have become popular methods for solving different optimization problems. Based on the usage of memory, metaheuristics can be classified into algorithms with memory and without memory (memory-less). The absence of memory in some metaheuristics will lead to the loss of the information gained in previous iterations. The metaheuristics tend to divert from promising areas of solutions search spaces which will lead to non-optimal solutions. This paper aims to review memory usage and its effect on the performance of the main SI-based metaheuristics. Investigation has been performed on SI metaheuristics, memory usage and memory-less metaheuristics, memory char

This paper demonstrates an experimental and numerical study aimed at comparing the influence of openings of different configurations on the flexural behavior of reinforced concrete gable roof beams. The experimental program consisted of testing six simply supported gable beams subjected to mid-point concentrated load. The variable which has been investigated in this work was opening's configuration (quadrilateral or circular) with the same upper and lower chords depth. The results indicate improvement in the beams’ flexural behavior when circular openings were used compared with that of quadrilateral openings, represented by an increase in ultimate load capacity and a decrease in deflection at the service limit. Also, there was an

Background: Complete denture wearers show lower levels of bite force than dentate subjects. This has a significant influence on their chewing efficiency. In this study an attempt was made to investigate the effect of the impression technique on the maximum bite force in complete denture wearers. Materials and methods: The patients selected for this research were 12 edentulous patients. Three different techniques for registering the final impression were made; the mucostatic, mucofunctional, and the selective pressure impression technique. Two sets of upper and lower denture bases and one set of upper and lower dentures were constructed for each subject. Intraoral and extraoral instruments and devices, as well as a computer program were used

This paper reports a comprehensive study on the behavior of concavely curved soffit reinforced concrete (RC) beams strengthened in flexure with carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites under static loading. The main objective of this paper is to explore the effect of surface concavity on the bond performance of externally bonded wet layup CFRP sheets and laminates. An experimental program consisting of flexural strengthening of 24 RC beams with concavely curved soffits was carried out. All specimens were simply supported RC beams tested under three-point bending. Of the 24 beams, 6 beams were flat soffit RC beams, and the remainder were fabricated with concavely curved soffits with a degree of curvature that is ranging from 5 mm/m