Micro-perforated panel (MPP) absorber is increasingly gaining popularity as an alternative sound absorber in buildings compared to the well-known synthetic porous materials. A single MPP has a typical feature of a Helmholtz resonator with a high amplitude of absorption but a narrow absorption frequency bandwidth. To improve the bandwidth, a single MPP can be cascaded with another single MPP to form a double-layer MPP. This paper proposes the introduction of inhomogeneous perforation in the double-layer MPP system (DL-iMPP) to enhance the absorption bandwidth of a double-layer MPP. Mathematical models are proposed using the equivalent electrical circuit model and are validated with experiments with good agreement. It is revealed that the DL-

Detection of early clinical keratoconus (KCN) is a challenging task, even for expert clinicians. In this study, we propose a deep learning (DL) model to address this challenge. We first used Xception and InceptionResNetV2 DL architectures to extract features from three different corneal maps collected from 1371 eyes examined in an eye clinic in Egypt. We then fused features using Xception and InceptionResNetV2 to detect subclinical forms of KCN more accurately and robustly. We obtained an area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) of 0.99 and an accuracy range of 97–100% to distinguish normal eyes from eyes with subclinical and established KCN. We further validated the model based on an independent dataset with

Five Saccharomyces cerevisiae isolated from the ability of chitinase production from the isolates were studied. Quantitative screening appeared that Saccharomyces cerevisiae S4 was the highest chitinase producer specific activity 1.9 unit/mg protein. The yeast was culture in liquid and solid state fermentation media (SSF). Different plant obstanases were used for (SSF) with the chitine, while liquid media contained chitine with the diffrented nitrogen source. The favorable condition for chitinase producers were incubated at 30 ºC at pH 6 and 1% colloidal chitine.

Flexible pavements are considered an essential element of transportation infrastructure. So, evaluations of flexible pavement performance are necessary for the proper management of transportation infrastructure. Pavement condition index (PCI) and international roughness index (IRI) are common indices applied to evaluate pavement surface conditions. However, the pavement condition surveys to calculate PCI are costly and time-consuming as compared to IRI. This article focuses on developing regression models that predict PCI from IRI. Eighty-three flexible pavement sections, with section length equal to 250 m, were selected in Al-Diwaniyah, Iraq, to develop PCI-IRI relationships. In terms of the quantity and severity of eac

This work, deals with Kumaraswamy distribution. Kumaraswamy (1976, 1978) showed well known probability distribution functions such as the normal, beta and log-normal but in (1980) Kumaraswamy developed a more general probability density function for double bounded random processes, which is known as Kumaraswamy’s distribution. Classical maximum likelihood and Bayes methods estimator are used to estimate the unknown shape parameter (b). Reliability function are obtained using symmetric loss functions by using three types of informative priors two single priors and one double prior. In addition, a comparison is made for the performance of these estimators with respect to the numerical solution which are found using expansion method. The

Background: Although mammography is a powerful screening tool in detection of early breast cancer, it is imperfect, particularly for women with dense breast, which have a higher risk to develop cancer and decrease the sensitivity of mammogram, Automated breast ultrasound is a recently introduced ultrasonography technique, developed with the purpose to standardize breast ultrasonography and overcome some limitations of handheld ultrasound, this study aims to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of Automated breast ultrasound and compare it with handheld ultrasound in the detection and characterization of breast lesions in women with dense breasts. Objectives: To evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of Automated breast ultrasound and compare

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic destructive inflammatory disease associated with destruction of joint connective tissues and bones, affecting 0.5%–1% of the population worldwide reporting higher prevalence of periodontitis among rheumatoid arthritis patients. The purpose of this study is to estimate level of salivary C-reactive protein in relation to the occurrence and severity of the periodontal disease and other oral parameters among group of patients with rheumatoid arthritis Material and methods: Fifty women patients with rheumatoid arthritis; twenty five on Methotrexate treatment and twenty five on combination treatment of Methotrexate and Etanercept selected as study groups with an age range (30-40) years old and