Objective: The approximate life span of a silicone maxillofacial prosthesis is as short as1.5–2 years of clinical service, then a new prosthesis should be fabricated. The most common reasonfor re-making the prosthesis is silicone mechanical properties degradation. The aim of this studywas to assess some mechanical properties of VST-30 silicone for maxillofacial prostheses after addi-tion of intrinsic pigments.Methods: Two types of intrinsic pigments (rayon flocking and burnt sienna); each of them wasincorporated into silicone. One hundred and twenty samples were prepared and split into 4 groupsaccording to the conducted tests (tear strength, hardness, surface roughness, and tensile strengthand elongation percentage) with 30 samples for ea

     Poly ethylene oxide PEO / Poly vinyl alcohol PVA  blends were prepared by cast method at different ratios of (25%PEO/75%PVA, 30%PEO/70%PVA, 35%PEO/65%PVA, 40%PEO/60%PVA, and 50%PEO/505PVA). Samples miscibility ,and thermal stability were studied  by using differential scanning calorimetry(DSC),and thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA) analysis. The results proved that there was one glass transition temperature (Tg=160°C) at 25%PEO\PVA ratio
)that was attributed to its miscibility. This miscibility associated with (Hydrogen  bonds) between (Hydroxyl group) in PVA, and PEO, whereas there were two glass transition temperature for the blends ratio more than 30%PEO,that was due its immisc

The parasite tapeworm (Raillietina echinobothrida) belonges to the class Cestoda, it is responsible for nodular tapeworm disease in poultry .The aim of this study was to determine tapeworm parasites infections in Columba livia from two markets in the province of Baghdad for the period from May to December 2014. From a total of thirty five sample of Columba livia were randomly selected and then examined the elementary canal of these samples. The present study showed that the collected rock pigeon were found six infected with the cestode Raillietina echinobothrida with infection rate (17.14%). The statistical analysis for the characters of the cestode showed significant differences in all recipes, but there were no significant difference

Resilient polymeric materials such as silicone elastomers are currently used for maxillofacial prostheses construction but the strength of these materials and their clinical performance need to be optimized with the addition of reinforcing fillers. This study investigates the effect of zirconia nanopowder addition on tear strength, tensile strength, elongation at break, Shore A hardness, surface roughness and cytotoxicity of VST-50 maxillofacial silicone. Silicone base was mixed with different amounts (1%, 2% and 3%) of zirconia nanopowder using a vacuum mixer. Silicone without filler was used as control for comparison. Scanning Electron Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy were utilized to assess the efficiency of high-shear vacuum mixin

         The world's population growth and the increasing demand for new infrastructure facilities and buildings , present us with the vision of a higher resources consumption, specially in the form of more durable concrete such as High Performance Concrete (HPC) . Moreover , the growth of the world pollution by plastic waste has been tremendous. The aim of this research is to investigate the change in mechanical properties of HPC with added waste plastics in concrete. For this purpose 2.5%, 5% and 7.5% in volume of natural fine aggregate in the HPC mixes were replaced by an equal volume of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) waste , got by shredded PET bottles. The mechanical propert

A low-cost reverse flow plasma system powered by argon gas pumping was built using homemade materials in this paper. The length of the resulting arc change was directly proportional to the flow rate, while using the thermal camera to examine the thermal intensity distribution and demonstrating that it is concentrated in the centre, away from the walls at various flow rates, the resulting arc's spectra were also measured. The results show that as the gas flow rate increased, so did the ambient temperature. The results show that the medium containing the arc has a maximum temperature of 34.1 ˚C at a flow rate of 14 L/min and a minimum temperature of 22.6 ˚C at a flow rate of 6 L/min.

The present work studies the mechanical properties of SiO2 μPs, and NPs in St/PVA blends. The samples were prepared by casting method as PVA, St/PVA blends at different concentrations (30, 40, 50, and 60 %). DSC and TGA tests were carried out to the samples evolved. The result showed a single glass transition temperature (Tg) for all St /PVA blends that was attributed to the good miscibility of the blends involved. It was found that (Tg) decrease with starch ratio increase. It was seen that (PVA) of (Tg=105 oC); The glass transition temperature which was decrease with starch ratio that was attributed to glass transition relaxation process due to micro-Brownian motion of the main chain back bond. The endothermic peak at 200 oC was attrib

Health and environmental factors as well as operational difficulties are major challenges facing the development of an anaerobic digestion process. Some of these problems relate to the use of sludge collected from primary and secondary clarifier units in wastewater treatment plants for laboratory purposes.

The present study addresses the preparation of sludge for laboratory purposes by using a mixture that consists of the digested sludge, which is less pathogenic, compared to the collected sludge from the primary or secondary clarifier, and food wastes. The sludge has been tested experimentally for 19 and 32 days under mesophilic conditions. The results show a steady methane production rate from the anaerobic dig