Abstract Background: The daily usage of maxillofacial prostheses causes them to mechanically deteriorate with time. This study was aimed to evaluate the reinforcement of VST50F maxillofacial silicone by using yttrium oxide (Y2O3) nanoparticles (NPs) to resist aging and mechanical deterioration. Materials and Method: Y2O3 NPs (30–45nm) were loaded into VST50F maxillofacial silicone in two weight percentages (1 and 1.5 wt%), which were predetermined in a pilot study as the best rates for improving tear strength with minimum increase in hardness values. A total of 120 specimens were prepared and divided into the control and experimental groups (with 1 and 1.5 wt% Y2O3 addition). Each group included 40 specimens, 10 specimens for each parameter tested (i.e., tear strength, surface roughness, hardness, tensile strength and elongation percentage). Specimens were artificially aged in a weathering chamber for 150 h and then tested. Data were analyzed by ANOVA and Tukey’s honestly significant difference (HSD). Statistical significance was set to P ≤ 0.05. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy were also conducted. Results and Discussion: SEM results showed that Y2O3 NPs were distributed well within the silicon matrix. FTIR results indicated that the NPs were physically dispersed within VST50F silicone without chemical interaction. After 150 h of accelerated artificial aging, adding Y2O3 NPs significantly increased the tear strength, hardness, surface roughness, and elongation percentage. Tensile strength increased non significantly. Conclusion: Adding Y2O3 NPs as fillers improved the mechanical properties of artificially aged maxillofacial silicone elastomer. Keywords: maxillofacial silicone, Y2O3, nanoparticles, fillers, artificial aging.
This study is planned with the aim of constructing models that can be used to forecast trip production in the Al-Karada region in Baghdad city incorporating the socioeconomic features, through the use of various statistical approaches to the modeling of trip generation, such as artificial neural network (ANN) and multiple linear regression (MLR). The research region was split into 11 zones to accomplish the study aim. Forms were issued based on the needed sample size of 1,170. Only 1,050 forms with responses were received, giving a response rate of 89.74% for the research region. The collected data were processed using the ANN technique in MATLAB v20. The same database was utilized to
This experiment was conducted in the orchard of the Department of Horticulture,college of Agriculture,Baghdad University during the growing season of 2007 To study the effects of spray with three concentration of cultar(0,500,1000 mg.L-1) ,tow concentration of K2SO4(0,5g.L-1), and salinity of irrigation water with three concentration (1,2,3dS.m-1) on some characteristics of vegetative growth of two cultivars of apricot trees (Labib1 and Zienni).The age of trees was four years .The tree grafted on original of seed apricot . Afactorial trail was carry out according to randomized complete block design with arrangement of split-split with three replications. Salinity of irrigation water took main plot, potassium took sub plot and cultar took s
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Abstract
Rayleigh distribution is one of the important distributions used for analysis life time data, and has applications in reliability study and physical interpretations. This paper introduces four different methods to estimate the scale parameter, and also estimate reliability function; these methods are Maximum Likelihood, and Bayes and Modified Bayes, and Minimax estimator under squared error loss function, for the scale and reliability function of the generalized Rayleigh distribution are obtained. The comparison is done through simulation procedure, t
... Show MoreTwo groups of chronic hepatitis B and C virus patients were divided into Pre-treated patients (25 CHB patients with positive HBs Ag for more than 6 months and 40 CHC patients), and post-treated patients [12 CHB patients (4, 6, and 2 were treated with lamivudine, IFN-? and combination of LMV + IFN-? respectively), and 27 patients for CHC (3, 13 and 11 patients were treated with Ribavirin, IFN-? and combination therapy (RBV+ IFN-?) respectively].These patients were followed up for 6 months. By using ELISA technique, levels of IL-6, IL-10, IFN-? and TNF-? were measured in vivo and in vitro (supernatant of PBMCs stimulated with PHA) and compared with healthy control. The mean level of IL-6, IL-10 and TNF-? in CHB patients showed significant dif
... Show MoreIn this work, solid random gain media were fabricated from laser dye solutions containing nanoparticles as scattering centers. Two different rhodamine dyes (123 and 6G) were used to host the highly-pure titanium dioxide nanoparticles to form the random gain media. The spectroscopic characteristics (mainly fluorescence) of these media were determined and studied. These random gain media showed laser emission in the visible region of electromagnetic spectrum. Fluorescence characteristics can be controlled to few nanometers by adjusting the characteristics of the host and nanoparticles as well as the preparation conditions of the samples. Emission of narrow linewidth (3nm) and high intensity in the visible region (533-537nm) was obtained.