Several stress-strain models were used to predict the strengths of steel fiber reinforced concrete, which are distinctive of the material. However, insufficient research has been done on the influence of hybrid fiber combinations (comprising two or more distinct fibers) on the characteristics of concrete. For this reason, the researchers conducted an experimental program to determine the stress-strain relationship of 30 concrete samples reinforced with two distinct fibers (a hybrid of polyvinyl alcohol and steel fibers), with compressive strengths ranging from 40 to 120 MPa. A total of 80% of the experimental results were used to develop a new empirical stress-strain model, which was accomplished through the application of the parti

In networking communication systems like vehicular ad hoc networks, the high vehicular mobility leads to rapid shifts in vehicle densities, incoherence in inter-vehicle communications, and challenges for routing algorithms. It is necessary that the routing algorithm avoids transmitting the pockets via segments where the network density is low and the scale of network disconnections is high as this could lead to packet loss, interruptions and increased communication overhead in route recovery. Hence, attention needs to be paid to both segment status and traffic. The aim of this paper is to present an intersection-based segment aware algorithm for geographic routing in vehicular ad hoc networks. This algorithm makes available the best route f

Breast cancer is the commonest cancer affecting women worldwide. Different studies have dealt with the etiological factors of that cancer aiming to find a way for early diagnosis and satisfactory therapy. The present study clarified the relationship between genetic polymorphisms of BRCA1 & BRCA2 genes and some etiological risk factors among breast cancer patients in Iraq. This investigation was carried out on 25 patients (all were females) who were diagnosed as breast cancer patients attended AL-Kadhemya Teaching Hospital in Baghdad and 10 apparently healthy women were used as a control, all women (patients and control) aged above 40 years. The Wizard Promega kit was used for DNA isolation from breast patients and normal individuals. B

A new modified differential evolution algorithm DE-BEA, is proposed to improve the reliability of the standard DE/current-to-rand/1/bin by implementing a new mutation scheme inspired by the bacterial evolutionary algorithm (BEA). The crossover and the selection schemes of the DE method are also modified to fit the new DE-BEA mechanism. The new scheme diversifies the population by applying to all the individuals a segment based scheme that generates multiple copies (clones) from each individual one-by-one and applies the BEA segment-wise mechanism. These new steps are embedded in the DE/current-to-rand/bin scheme. The performance of the new algorithm has been compared with several DE variants over eighteen benchmark functions including sever

Photoacoustic is a unique imaging method that combines the absorption contrast of light or radio frequency waves with ultrasound resolution. When the deposition of this energy is sufficiently short, a thermo-elastic expansion takes place whereby acoustic waves are generated. These waves can be recorded and stored to construct an image. This work presents experimental procedure of laser photoacoustic two dimensional imaging to detect tumor embedded within normal tissue. The experimental work is accomplished using phantoms that are sandwiched from fish heart or blood sac (simulating a tumor) 1-14mm mean diameter embedded within chicken breast to simulate a real tissue. Nd: YAG laser of 1.064μm and 532nm wavelengths, 10ns pulse duration, 4

This paper describes the problem of online autonomous mobile robot path planning, which is consisted of finding optimal paths or trajectories for an autonomous mobile robot from a starting point to a destination across a flat map of a terrain, represented by a 2-D workspace. An enhanced algorithm for solving the problem of path planning using Bacterial Foraging Optimization algorithm is presented. This nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithm, which imitates the foraging behavior of E-coli bacteria, was used to find the optimal path from a starting point to a target point. The proposed algorithm was demonstrated by simulations in both static and dynamic different environments. A comparative study was evaluated between the developed algori

Catalytic reduction is considered an effective approach for the reduction of toxic organic pollutants from the environment, but finding an active catalyst is still a big challenge. Herein, Ag decorated CeO2 catalyst was synthesized through polyol reduction method and applied for catalytic reduction (conversion) of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) to 4-aminophenol (4-AP). The Ag decorated CeO2 catalyst displayed an outstanding reduction activity with 99% conversion of 4-NP in 5 min with a 0.61 min−1 reaction rate (k). A number of structural characterization techniques were executed to investigate the influence of Ag on CeO2 and its effect on the catalytic conversion of 4-NP. The outstanding catalytic performances of the Ag-CeO2 catalyst can be assigne

In many applications such as production, planning, the decision maker is important in optimizing an objective function that has fuzzy ratio two functions which can be handed using fuzzy fractional programming problem technique. A special class of optimization technique named fuzzy fractional programming problem is considered in this work when the coefficients of objective function are fuzzy. New ranking function is proposed and used to convert the data of the fuzzy fractional programming problem from fuzzy number to crisp number so that the shortcoming when treating the original fuzzy problem can be avoided. Here a novel ranking function approach of ordinary fuzzy numbers is adopted for ranking of triangular fuzzy numbers with simpler an