Resilient polymeric materials such as silicone elastomers are currently used for maxillofacial prostheses construction but the strength of these materials and their clinical performance need to be optimized with the addition of reinforcing fillers. This study investigates the effect of zirconia nanopowder addition on tear strength, tensile strength, elongation at break, Shore A hardness, surface roughness and cytotoxicity of VST-50 maxillofacial silicone. Silicone base was mixed with different amounts (1%, 2% and 3%) of zirconia nanopowder using a vacuum mixer. Silicone without filler was used as control for comparison. Scanning Electron Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy were utilized to assess the efficiency of high-shear vacuum mixing as filler dispersion method and the surface topography, respectively. Both SEM and AFM images showed that the zirconia nanopowder were distributed fairly well within the polymer. Statistically, highly significant increase in tear strength, tensile strength and hardness with non-significant decrease in elongation at break and non-significant increase in surface roughness were seen with 1% and 2% groups. Whereas with 3% group, there was significant improvement in tear strength, tensile strength and hardness but there was significant undesirable decrease in elongation and increase in roughness. Cytotoxicity test revealed that the addition of zirconia nanopowder was nontoxic to Rat Embryonic Fibroblast (REF) cells and there was non-significant change in the cell viability of all study groups after 24- and 72-hours incubation periods. In conclusion, the addition of 2% by weight nano zirconia to VST-50 maxillofacial silicone could be beneficial in enhancing its performance.
The present research aims to present a theoretical framework for the application of takaful insurance in Iraq, as well as to identify the level of impact on the development of insurance services in the Iraqi market, and to make recommendations and suggestions that lead to increased interest in this area, and thus contribute to the development and integration of insurance service in the Iraqi market,
The research adopted the descriptive analytical method, and the questionnaire was used to survey the opinions of the research sample consisting of department managers and their assistants and some employees of the graduate degrees in addition to employees of the departments of electronic calculator in the Iraqi insurance sector, and t
... Show MoreThe main purpose of the research is to demonstrate the importance of the insurance sector in the economy through its role in providing security for all economic sectors and thus stimulating the gross domestic product and reducing dependence on the output of the oil sector, which may expose the Iraqi economy to several problems and imbalances, I have found that there is a great weakness in the role of the insurance sector in Iraq at the level of government, companies and individuals, and the reason for this is the lack of policies supporting the insurance sector and the lack of work in the strategy of economic diversity and the decrease of security awareness by individuals so became Developing the sector to ensure the urgent need
... Show MoreDiscriminant analysis is a technique used to distinguish and classification an individual to a group among a number of groups based on a linear combination of a set of relevant variables know discriminant function. In this research discriminant analysis used to analysis data from repeated measurements design. We will deal with the problem of discrimination and classification in the case of two groups by assuming the Compound Symmetry covariance structure under the assumption of normality for univariate repeated measures data.
... Show More
Photocatalyst composed of core/shell magnetic zincoxysulfide nanocomposite coated with sulfonated polyindole ([email protected]/SPID) has been prepared and used for simultaneous photocatalytic H2 production and Bisphenol A (BPA) degradation. XRD, FE-SEM, EDX, BET surface area, UV-vis DRS and VSM were used to characterize the synthesized nanocomposites. The photocatalytic performance was evaluated using batch reactor under visible light irradiation. The photocatalytic activity of [email protected]/SPID nanocomposite was revealed to exceed that of [email protected] nanocomposite due to the heterojunctions between SPID and [email protected] species. The results exhibited that the effect of BPA initial concentration was found to be effectual on the improvement
... Show MoreBeyond the immediate content of speech, the voice can provide rich information about a speaker's demographics, including age and gender. Estimating a speaker's age and gender offers a wide range of applications, spanning from voice forensic analysis to personalized advertising, healthcare monitoring, and human-computer interaction. However, pinpointing precise age remains intricate due to age ambiguity. Specifically, utterances from individuals at adjacent ages are frequently indistinguishable. Addressing this, we propose a novel, end-to-end approach that deploys Mozilla's Common Voice dataset to transform raw audio into high-quality feature representations using Wav2Vec2.0 embeddings. These are then channeled into our self-attentio
... Show MoreCoupling reaction of ( 4-amino antipyrene) with the (L- tyrosine ) gave the new azo ligand 2- ( 4- Antipyrene azo ) - tyrosine .Treatment of this ligand with metal ions (Mn(II) ,Co(II), Ni(II), and Cu(II) )in ethanolic medium in (1:2) (M:L) ratio yield a series of a neutral complexes of the general formula [M(L)2] . The prepared complexes were characterized using flame atomic absorption , FT.IR , UV-Vis spectroscopic and elemental microanalysis (C.H.N) as well as magnetic susceptibility and conductivity measurement
4 Blood Res 2018;53:314-319. Received on August 11, 2018 Revised on August 30, 2018 Accepted on August 30, 2018 Background Iron overload is a risk factor affecting all patients with thalassemia intermedia (TI). We aimed to determine whether there is a relationship of serum ferritin (SF) and alanine ami- notransferase (ALT) with liver iron concentration (LIC) determined by R2 magnetic reso- nance imaging (R2-MRI), to estimate the most relevant degree of iron overload and best time to chelate in patients with TI. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 119 patients with TI (mean age years) were randomly se- lected and compared with 120 patients who had a diagnosis of thalassemia major (TM). Correlations of LIC, as determined by R2-MRI, with SF
... Show MoreABSTRACT Background: stress is the reactions of the body to forces of a deleterious nature, infections and various abnormal states that tend to disturb its normal physiological equilibrium; It is described as adverse emotions or reactions to unpleasant experiences; Thus, any real or perceived physical, social, or psychological event or stimulus that causes bodies to react or respond have deleterious effects on the general and oral health. The aims of this study were to assess the severity of dental caries among the students with different categories of stressful life events in relation to physicochemical characteristics of whole stimulated saliva. Materials and Methods: the total sample is composed of 300 students (males only) aged 17-18 ye
... Show More