A novel demountable shear connector for precast steel-concrete composite bridges is presented. The connector uses high-strength steel bolts, which are fastened to the top flange of the steel beam with the aid of a special locking nut configuration that prevents bolts from slipping within their holes. Moreover, the connector promotes accelerated construction and overcomes the typical construction tolerance issues of precast structures. Most importantly, the connector allows bridge disassembly. Therefore, it can address different bridge deterioration scenarios with minimum disturbance to traffic flow including the following: (1) precast deck panels can be rapidly uplifted and replaced; (2) connectors can be rapidly removed and replaced; and (

The current paper examines the Arab EFL teacher view on the application of AI-based chatbots as a method of aiding writing instruction. It explores pedagogy, didactic difficulties and ethics. The overall aim is to clarify the perception that teachers have of AI chatbots as a useful tool in the writing process and to find out to what degree these perceptions are reflected in instructional decision-making and classroom behaviors. A quantitative study was conducted using a structured questionnaire that was given to forty Arab EFL teachers, using a sequential explanatory mixed-method design. To elaborate and contextualize the survey results, qualitative enquiry was implemented through semi-structured interviews with twelve teachers. Fin

Introduction and Aim: Cancers are a complex group of genetic illnesses that develop through multistep, mutagenic processes which can invade or spread throughout the body. Recent advances in cancer treatment involve oncolytic viruses to infect and destroy cancer cells. The Newcastle disease virus (NDV), an oncolytic virus has shown to have anti-cancer effects either directly by lysing cancer cells or indirectly by activating the immune system. The green fluorescent protein (GFP) has been widely used in studying the anti-tumor activity of oncolytic viruses. This study aimed to study the anticancer effect of a recombinant rNDV-GFP clone on NCI-H727 lung carcinoma cell line in vitro.   Materials and Methods: The GFP gene was inserted t

Grass trimming operation is widely done in Malaysia for the purpose of maintaining highways. Large number of operators engaged in this work encounters high level of noise generated by back pack type grass trimmer used for this purpose. High level of noise exposure gives different kinds of ill effect on human operators. Exact nature of deteriorated work performance is not known. For predicting the work efficiency deterioration, fuzzy tool has been used in present research. It has been established that a fuzzy computing system will help in identification and analysis of fuzzy models fuzzy system offers a convenient way of representing the relationships between the inputs and outputs of a system in the form of IF-THEN rules. The paper presents

           In this paper, the homotopy perturbation method (HPM) is presented for treating a linear system of second-kind mixed Volterra-Fredholm integral equations. The method is based on constructing the series whose summation is the solution of the considered system. Convergence of constructed series is discussed and its proof is given; also, the error estimation is obtained. Algorithm is suggested and applied on several examples and the results are computed by using MATLAB (R2015a). To show the accuracy of the results and the effectiveness of the method, the approximate solutions of some examples are compared with the exact solution by computing the absolute errors.

The present study is to investigate the possibility of using wastes in the form of scrap iron (ZVI) and/ or aluminum ZVAI for the detention and immobilization of the chromium ions in simulated wastewater. Different batch equilibrium parameters such as contact time (0-250) min, sorbent dose (2-8 g ZVI/100 mL and 0.2-1 g ZVAI/100 mL), initial pH (3-6), initial pollutant concentration of 50 mg/L, and speed of agitation (0-250) rpm were investigated. Maximum contaminant removal efficiency corresponding to (96 %) at 250 min contact time, 1g ZVAI/ 6g ZVI sorbent mass ratio, pH 5.5, pollutant concentration of 50 mg/L initially, and 250 rpm agitation speed were obtained.

The best isotherm model for the batch single Cr(III) uptake by ZVI

This study describe the effect of temperature on the optical
properties of nickel(ii) phthalocyanine tetrasulfonic acid tetrasodium
salt (NiPcTs) organic thin films which are prepared by spin coating
on indium tin oxide (ITO-glass). The optical absorption spectra of
these thin films are measured. Present studies reveal that the optical
band gap energies of NiPcTs thin films are dependent on the
annealing temperatures. The optical band gap decreases with increase
in annealing temperature, then increased when the temperature rising
to 473K. To enhance the results of Uv-Vis measurements and get
more accurate values of optical energy gaps; the Photoluminescence
spectra of as-deposited and annealed NiPcTs thin fi

The -mixing of  - transition in Er 168 populated in Er)n,n(Er 168168  reaction is calculated in the present work by using a2- ratio method. This method has used in previou studies [4, 5, 6, 7] in case that the second transition is pure or for that transition which can be considered as pure only, but in one work we applied this method for two cases, in the first one for pure transition and in the 2nd one for non pure transitions. We take into accunt the experimental a2- coefficient for p revious works and -values for one transition only [1]. The results obtained are, in general, in agood agreement within associated errors, with those reported previously [1], the discrepancies that occur are due to inaccuracies existing