This paper deals with the modeling of a preventive maintenance strategy applied to a single-unit system subject to random failures.

According to this policy, the system is subjected to imperfect periodic preventive maintenance restoring it to ‘as good as new’ with probability

p and leaving it at state ‘as bad as old’ with probability q. Imperfect repairs are performed following failures occurring between consecutive

preventive maintenance actions, i.e the times between failures follow a decreasing quasi-renewal process with parameter a. Considering the

average durations of the preventive and corrective maintenance actions a

Background: Male infertility is a global concern and it tends to increase due to miscellaneous factors, such as environmental toxins and genetic and lifestyle choices. The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) has recently attracted attention due to its involvement in male infertility mechanisms and impact on sperm production and function. AHR, a versatile receptor expressed in various tissues, including the testes, regulates the genes involved in spermatogenesis. AHR activation is associated with cell cycle regulation and chromatin condensation during spermatogenesis. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the influence of AHR activation on blood-testis barrier (BTB) integrity, focusing on the role of tight junction protein-1 (TJP1)

Pathological blood clot in blood vessels, which often leads to cardiovascular diseases, are one of the most common causes of death in humans. Therefore, enzymatic therapy to degrade blood clots is vital. To achieve this goal, bromelain was immobilized and used for the biodegradation of blood clots. Bromelain was extracted from the pineapple fruit pulp (Ananas comosus) and purified by ion exchange chromatography after precipitation with ammonium sulphate (0-80 %), resulting in a yield of 70%, purification fold of 1.42, and a specific activity of 1175 U/mg. Bromelain was covalently immobilized on functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT), with an enzyme loading of 71.35%. The results of the characterization of free and immobilized

The corrosion inhibition of low carbon steel in1N HCl solution in the presence of peach juice at temperature (30,40,50,and 60)°C at concentration ( 5, 10, 20, 30, 40and 50 cm3/L)were studied using weight loss and polarization techniques. Results show that the inhibition efficiency was increased with the increase of inhibitor concentration and increased with the increase of temperature up to 50ºC ,above 50ºC (i.e. at 60 ºC) the values of efficiency decreases. Activation parameters of the corrosion process such as activation energies, Ea, activation enthalpies, ΔH, and activation entropies, ΔS, were calculated. The adsorption of inhibitor follows Langmuir isotherm. Maximum inhibition efficiency obtained was a bout 91% at 50ºC in the

Accurate description of thermodynamic, structural, and electronic properties for bulk and surfaces of ceria (CeO₂) necessitates the inclusion of the Hubbard parameter (U) in the density functional theory (DFT) calculations to precisely account for the strongly correlated 4f electrons. Such treatment is a daunting task when attempting to draw a potential energy surface for CeO₂-catalyzed reaction. This is due to the inconsistent change in thermo-kinetics parameters of the reaction in reference to the variation in the U values. As an illustrative example, we investigate herein the discrepancy in activation and reaction energies for steps underlying the partial and full hydrogenation of acetyl

The optimization calculations are made to find the optimum properties of combined quadrupole lens consist of electrostatic and magnetic lenses to produce achromatic lens. The modified bell-shaped model is used and the calculation is made by solving the equation of motion and finding the transfer matrices in convergence and divergence planes, these matrices are used to find the properties of lens as the magnification and aberrations coefficients. To find the optimum values of chromatic and spherical aberrations coefficients, the effect of both the excitation parameter of the lens (n) and the effective length of the lens into account as effective parameters in the optimization processing

Estimation of elements: Pb, Zn, Mn, Cd, and Cu, which were conducted seasonally from October-2021 till March-2022 in residential areas of Baghdad City using Geoaccumulation index (Igeo), enrichment factor ratios (EF), the factor of contamination (CF), contamination degree (Cd), index of pollution load (PLI) and index of potential ecological risk (Eif). The overall contamination factor in the research area is limited from low contamination with Cu, Mn, and Zn, moderately contaminated to very high contamination with Pb and Cd, while the assessment according to the I-geo index shows categories that vary from a slightly polluted to unpolluted by those examined heavy metals. The pollution load index indicates that the soils in some resi