Background: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of in vitro long-term simulation of oral conditions on the bond strength of PEEK CAD/CAM lingual retainers.

Material and methods: The sample consisted of 12 PEEK CAD/CAM retainers each composed of 2 centrally perforated 3x4mm pads joined by a connector. They were treated by 98% sulfuric acid for 1 minute and then conditioned with Single Bond Universal and bonded to the lingual surface of premolar teeth by 3M Transbond TM System. Half of the retainers were artificially aged using a 30-day water storage and 5000 thermocycling protocol before bond strength testing to compare with the non-aged specimens.

Results: The artificially aged retainers showed a marginally

Abortion is categorized as the termination of conception caused by the failure or removal of the embryo from the uterus before the conclusion of pregnancy. Microorganisms and genetic factors are two of the many factors associated with abortion. Cytomegalovirus is a widespread congenital virus infection pathogen that affects a wide variety of people. The prothrombin gene is one of the essential causes that trigger blood clotting and the function of abortion women, therefore the aim of the study is to detect and associate Cytomegalovirus and prothrombin gene mutation (Gene ID: 14061 in NCBI) with abortion through genetic and immunological methods. Five ml of whole blood was collected from an intravenous puncture and divided into two tubes,

Significant advances in horizontal well drilling technology have been made in recent years. The conventional productivity equations for single phase flowing at steady state conditions have been used and solved using Microsoft Excel for various reservoir properties and different horizontal well lengths.
The deviation between the actual field data, and that obtained by the software based on conventional equations have been adjusted to introduce some parameters inserted in the conventional equation.
The new formula for calculating flow efficiency was derived and applied with the best proposed values of coefficients ψ=0.7 and ω= 1.4. The simulated results fitted the field data.
Various reservoir and field parameters including late

Moisture damage is a primary mode of distress occurring in hot mix asphalt (HMA) pavements in Iraq. Because of the loss of bond, or stripping, caused by the presence of moisture between the asphalt and aggregate, which is a problem in some areas and can be severe in some cases, it is requires to evaluate the design asphalt mixture to moisture susceptibility. Many factors such as aggregate characteristics, asphalt characteristics, environment, traffic, construction practices and drainage can contribute to stripping. Asphalt concrete mixes were prepared at their optimum asphalt content by superpave system and then tested to evaluate their engineering properties, which include tensile strength, resilient modulus, and perman

Hydrogen sulfide removal catalyst was prepared chemically by precipitation of zinc bicarbonate at a controlled pH. The physical and chemical catalyst characterization properties were investigated. The catalyst was tested for its activity in adsorption of H₂S using a plant that generates the H₂S from naphtha hydrodesulphurization and a unit for the adsorption of H₂S. The results comparison between the prepared and commercial catalysts revealed that the chemical method can be used to prepare the catalyst with a very good activity.

It has observed that the hydrogen sulfide removal over zinc oxide catalyst follows first order reaction kinetics with activation energy of 19.26 kJ/mole and enthalpy and e

Optical burst switching (OBS) network is a new generation optical communication technology. In an OBS network, an edge node first sends a control packet, called burst header packet (BHP) which reserves the necessary resources for the upcoming data burst (DB). Once the reservation is complete, the DB starts travelling to its destination through the reserved path. A notable attack on OBS network is BHP flooding attack where an edge node sends BHPs to reserve resources, but never actually sends the associated DB. As a result the reserved resources are wasted and when this happen in sufficiently large scale, a denial of service (DoS) may take place. In this study, we propose a semi-supervised machine learning approach using k-means algorithm

It is commonly known that Euler-Bernoulli’s thin beam theorem is not applicable whenever a nonlinear distribution of strain/stress occurs, such as in deep beams, or the stress distribution is discontinuous. In order to design the members experiencing such distorted stress regions, the Strut-and-Tie Model (STM) could be utilized. In this paper, experimental investigation of STM technique for three identical small-scale deep beams was conducted. The beams were simply supported and loaded statically with a concentrated load at the mid span of the beams. These deep beams had two symmetrical openings near the application point of loading. Both the deep beam, where the stress distribution cannot be assumed linear, and the ex

Background Cadmium (Cd), one of the most abundant heavy metals, is extremely toxic to both humans and animals. hIt is well known that zinc (Zn) administration reduces Cd-induced toxicity and that metallothioneins can have a protective effect in biological systems to mitigate Cd toxicity. Objective The aim of the current study to determine if Zn administration affected the induction of MT-1 and MT-2 in the liver tissue in mice exposed to Cd. Materials and methods Metallothionein protein (MT) level in the tissue of male mice were detected using the anion -exchang high-performance liquid chromatography coupled (HPLC)assay and immunohistochemical staining. Results Single treatment to zinc or cadmium increase the level of MT in the liver, but zi