Self-repairing technology based on micro-capsules is an efficient solution for repairing cracked cementitious composites. Self-repairing based on microcapsules begins with the occurrence of cracks and develops by releasing self-repairing factors in the cracks located in concrete. Based on previous comprehensive studies, this paper provides an overview of various repairing factors and investigative methodologies. There has recently been a lack of consensus on the most efficient criteria for assessing self-repairing based on microcapsules and the smart solutions for improving capsule survival ratios during mixing. The most commonly utilized self-repairing efficiency assessment indicators are mechanical resistance and durab

Photonic crystal fiber interferometers are used in many sensing applications. In this work, an in-reflection photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based on Mach-Zehnder (micro-holes collapsing) (MZ) interferometer, which exhibits high sensitivity to different volatile organic compounds (VOCs), without the needing of any permeable material. The interferometer is robust, compact, and consists of a stub photonic crystal fiber of large-mode area, photonic crystal fiber spliced to standard single mode fiber (SMF) (corning-28), this splicing occurs with optimized splice loss 0.19 dB In the splice regions the voids of the holey fiber are completely collapsed, which allows the excitation and recombination of core and cladding modes. The device reflection

In this paper, a modified derivation has been introduced to analyze the construction of C-space. The profit from using C-space is to make the process of path planning more safety and easer. After getting the C-space construction and map for two-link planar robot arm, which include all the possible situations of collision between robot parts and obstacle(s), the A* algorithm, which is usually used to find a heuristic path on Cartesian W-space, has been used to find a heuristic path on C-space map. Several modifications are needed to apply the methodology for a manipulator with degrees of freedom more than two. The results of C-space map, which are derived by the modified analysis, prove the accuracy of the overall C-space mapping and cons

Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures were synthesized through the hydrothermal method at various conditions growth times (6,7 and 8 hrs.) and a growth temperature (70, 90, and 100 ºC). The prepared ZnO nanostructure samples were described using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffractometer to distinguish their surface morphologies and crystal structures. The ZnO samples were confirmed to have the same crystal type, with different densities and dimensions (diameter and length). The obtained ZnO nanostructures were used to manufacture gas sensors for NO2 gas detection. Sensing characteristics for the fabricated sensor to NO2 gas were examined at different operating temperatures (180, 200, 220, and 240) ºC with a low gas concentrati

Salinity of soil or irrigation water is one of the most important obstacle towards crop production and productivity, especially with the increasing scarcity of fresh water in Iraq and the Arab countries. The impact of salinity will be alleviated with the increasing temperature due to global warming. The objectives of this article was to shed some light on traits more related to salinity stress tolerance in oats, and to identify genetic variation of these traits. A split-plot arrangement experiment with RCBD was applied through 2011-2013 on the farm of Dept. of Field Crops/Coll. of Agric./Univ. of Baghdad. The oats cultivars; Hamel, Pimula and Genzania were set in sub-plots, whereas water quality was set in main-plots. Water quality had two

The relationship between respiratory diseases and natural geographical variables relative to temperature, relative humidity, wind and solar radiation is a strong one.
The environmental factors have impact on increasing the proportion of people with respiratory diseases in the province of Najaf, especially industrial pollution and working conditions as well as the economic level.
Ah-Mishkhab was in the first rank in terms of the number of people infected with respiratory diseases reached 135177 and 41%, followed by Najaf governorate which reached its numbers to 77801 and 23%. The district of Kufa ranked third with 42051 and 13%, and the other administrative units at fourth and fifth rank respectively.
When comparing diseases and

AshShinnafiyah and AsSamawa cities suffer from significant increase in salinity of Euphrates River water compared with their counterpart's north AshShinnafiyah city which is reflected adversely on the quality of water within the study area. The study aims to find possible solutions to avoid the deterioration of Euphrates River northern AshShinnafiyah city until AsSamawa city that were
presented by total dissolved solid TDS. Twelve main hydrological and fifteen salinity measurement stations were selected to cover 117 km of the river reach within the study area during July-2011. Additional twenty three hydrological and salinity stations were adopted during March-2012, winter season to the river within the study area. After conducting t

The genic variation analysis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa after filtering the spurious variation appeared that 222 variable loci out of 5572 loci were detected. The type of variation analysis revealed that single nucleotide polymorphism was highly significant compared with other types of variation due the fact that the genome variation was achieved on the level of microevolution. Moreover, the proportional effect of functional scheme showed that genes responsible for environmental information were the highest comparable to another scheme. The genes of environmental information processing locate on outer membrane and face the defense strategy of the host therefore change in proteins coded by these genes lead to escape the immune system defense

Zinc Oxide thin film of 2 μm thickness has been grown on glass substrate by pulsed laser deposition technique at substrate temperature of 500 oC under the vacuum pressure of 8×10-2 mbar. The optical properties concerning the absorption, and transmission spectra were studied for the prepared thin film. From the transmission spectra, the optical gap and linear refractive index of the ZnO thin film was determined. The structure of the ZnO thin film was tested with X-Ray diffraction and it was formed to be a polycrystalline with many peaks.