Introduction: Methadone hydrochloride (MDN) is an effective pharmacological substitution treatment for opioids dependence, adopted in different countries as methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) programmes. However, MDN can exacerbate the addiction problem if it is abused and injected intravenously, and the frequent visits to the MMT centres can reduce patient compliance. The overall aim of this study is to develop a novel extended-release capsule of MDN using the sol-gel silica (SGS) technique that has the potential to counteract medication-tampering techniques and associated health risks and reduce the frequent visits to MMT centres. Methods: For MDN recrystallisation, a closed container method (CCM) and hot-stage method (HSM) were conduc

Two novel demountable shear connectors for precast steel-concrete composite bridges are presented. The connectors use high-strength steel bolts, which are fastened to the steel beam with the aid of a special locking configuration that prevents slip of bolts within their holes. Moreover, the connectors promote accelerated construction and overcome typical construction tolerances issues of precast structures. Most importantly, the connectors allow bridge disassembly, and therefore, can address different bridge deterioration scenarios with minimum disturbance to traffic flow, i.e. (1) precast deck panels can be rapidly uplifted and replaced; (2) connectors can be rapidly removed and replaced; and (3) steel beams can be replaced, while precast

An encryption system needs unpredictability and randomness property to maintain information security during transmission and storage. Although chaotic maps have this property, they have limitations such as low Lyapunov exponents, low sensitivity and limited chaotic regions. The paper presents a new improved skewed tent map to address these problems. The improved skew tent map (ISTM) increases the sensitivity to initial conditions and control parameters. It has uniform distribution of output sequences. The programs for ISTM chaotic behavior were implemented in MATLAB R2023b. The novel ISTM produces a binary sequence, with high degree of complexity and good randomness properties. The performance of the ISTM generator shows effective s

MRY *Khalid Sh. Sharhan, *Naseer Shukur Hussein, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT IN SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES, 2021

Many cities suffer from the large spread of slums, especially the cities of the Middle East. The purpose of the paper is to study the reality of informal housing in Al-Barrakia and the most important problems that it suffers from. The paper also seeks to study the presence or absence of a correlation between urban safety indicators and urban containment indicators as one of the methods of developing and planning cities. This can be achieved through sustainable urban management. The slums are a source of many urban problems that threaten the security and safety of the residents and represent a focus for the concentration of crimes and drugs. The paper seeks to answer the following question: How can urban safety be improved through urban cont

An automatic text summarization system mimics how humans summarize by picking the most ‎significant sentences in a source text. However, the complexities of the Arabic language have become ‎challenging to obtain information quickly and effectively. The main disadvantage of the ‎traditional approaches is that they are strictly constrained (especially for the Arabic language) by the ‎accuracy of sentence feature ‎functions, weighting schemes, ‎and similarity calculations. On the other hand, the meta-heuristic search approaches have a feature tha

Background: Piezosurgery improved the split approach by making it safer, easier, and less prone to complications when treating extremely atrophic crests. Densah drills, with their unique design, expand the ridge by densifying bone in a reverse, non-cutting mode. Objective: To assess the effectiveness of sagittal piezosurgery, which involves cutting bone to the full implant depth and then expanding it using osseodensification drills. We use this technique to expand narrow alveolar bones and simultaneously place dental implants in the maxillary and mandibular arches. Methods: Fourteen patients received 31 dental implants. The maxillary arch received 19, and the mandible received 12 dental implants. This study will include patients who

A method has been demonstrated to synthesise effective zeolite membranes from existing crystals without a hydrothermal synthesis step.