Flexible pavements are subjected to three main distress types: fatigue crack, thermal crack, and permanent deformation. Under severe climate conditions, thermal cracking particularly contributes largely to a considerable scale of premature deterioration of pavement infrastructure worldwide. This challenge is especially relevant for Europe, as weather conditions vary significantly throughout the year. Hydrated lime (HL) has been recognized as an effective additive to improve the mechanical properties of asphalt concrete for pavement applications. Previous research has found that a replacement of conventional limestone dust filler using hydrated lime at 2.5% of the total weight of aggregates generated an optimum improvement in the mec

In this study, NAC-capped CdTe/CdS/ZnS core/double shell QDs were synthesized in an aqueous medium to investigate their utility in distinguishing normal DNA from mutated DNA extracted from biological samples. Following the interaction between the synthesized QDs with DNA extracted from leukemia cases (represents damaged DNA) and that of healthy donors (represents undamaged DNA), differential fluorescent emission maxima and intensities were observed. It was found that damaged DNA from leukemic cells DNA-QDs conjugates at 585 nm while intact DNA (from healthy subjects) DNA–QDs conjugates at 574 nm. The obtained results from the optical analyses indicate that the prepared QDs could be utilized as probe for detecting disrupted DNA th

Reading is one of the essential components of the English language. Countries that use English as a second language (ESL) sometimes have difficulties in reading and comprehension. According to many researches, mother tongue has proved some interferences with learning a second language. This study investigated the results of reading difficulties of young second language learners in terms of accuracy, comprehension, and rate using the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability test. The study was carried out in one of the High Schools for Boys in Hyderabad, India and included Grade five, aged 10-12 years. In order to understand the reading difficulties of English as a second language, a qualitative approach was employed. Interview, reading tes

     Background:  Chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand (CXCL9) has an important role recruiting the T-lymphocytes and immune response after infection by inducing T-cells accumulation around the areas associated with infections. However, this role is poorly known in relation with Toxoplasma gondii infection and also in association with thyroid hormones, which the present study is focused on. Methods: Eighty-seven women were included in this study for the period between September 2021 and February 2022. Blood samples of uninfected healthy pregnant, in addition to aborted and pregnant women infected with toxoplasmosis, were collected. Sera were then obtained and stored at -10°C. Toxo-latex agglutination test was done, followed by detec

Identify the effect of an educational design according to the repulsive (allosteric) learning model on the achievement of chemistry and lateral thinking. The sample consisted of (59) students from third-grade intermediate students. They were randomly distributed into two groups (experimental and control), and the equivalence was done in (chronological age, previous achievement in chemistry, intelligence, lateral thinking). The (30) students from experimental group were taught according to the instructional design, other 29 students from the (control) group were taught according to the usual method. Two tests done, one of them is an achievement test consisted of (30) items of the type of multiple choice, the other was a lateral think

This paper investigates the performance evaluation of two state feedback controllers, Pole Placement (PP) and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR). The two controllers are designed for a Mass-Spring-Damper (MSD) system found in numerous applications to stabilize the MSD system performance and minimize the position tracking error of the system output. The state space model of the MSD system is first developed. Then, two meta-heuristic optimizations, Simulated Annealing (SA) optimization and Ant Colony (AC) optimization are utilized to optimize feedback gains matrix K of the PP and the weighting matrices Q and R of the LQR to make the MSD system reach stabilization and reduce the oscillation of the response. The Matlab softwar

Classification of imbalanced data is an important issue. Many algorithms have been developed for classification, such as Back Propagation (BP) neural networks, decision tree, Bayesian networks etc., and have been used repeatedly in many fields. These algorithms speak of the problem of imbalanced data, where there are situations that belong to more classes than others. Imbalanced data result in poor performance and bias to a class without other classes. In this paper, we proposed three techniques based on the Over-Sampling (O.S.) technique for processing imbalanced dataset and redistributing it and converting it into balanced dataset. These techniques are (Improved Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique (Improved SMOTE),  Border