Soft clays are generally characterized by low shear strength, low permeability and high compressibility. An effective method to accelerate consolidation of such soils is to use vertical drains along with vacuum preloading to encourage radial flow of water.  In this research numerical modeling of prefabricated vertical drains with vacuum pressure was done to investigate the effect of using vertical drains together with vacuum pressure on the degree of saturation of fully and saturated-unsaturated soft soils.  Laboratory experiments were conducted by using a specially-designed large consolidometer cell where a central drain was installed and vacuum pressure was applied. All tests were conducted

Incremental sheet metal forming process is an advanced flexible manufacturing process to produce various 3D products without using dedicated tool as in conventional metal forming. There are a lot of process parameters that have effect on this process, studying the effect of some parameters on the strain distributions of the product over the length of deformation is the aim of this study.

In order to achieve this goal, three factors (tool forming shape, feed rate and incremental step size) are examined depending on three levels on the strain distributions over the wall of the product. Strain measurement was accomplished by using image processing technique using MATALB program. The significance of the control factors are explored u

Pure blend (PC-PS) and doped blend films with various volume ratio of Coumarin dye were prepared by using casting method. The absorption and transmission spectra for these films were measured using UV/VIS spectrometer technique in order to assessment the type of transition which was found to be indirect transition. The optical energy gap of pure PC was (4.24) eV, pure PS was (4.39) eV, Coumarin dye was (4.08) eV, and pure blend was (4.1) eV. After doping blend with Coumarin dye; the energy gap decreases by (0.06) eV in volume ratio (12) ml. The results showed that absorption coefficient and refractive index affects by doping. When adding the Coumarin dye to the pure blend with different concentrations (12, 24, 36, and 48) ml, the FTIR sp

Background: The daily cleaning routine of the silicone maxillofacial prostheses by the patient may cause some alteration in the materials properties. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of different disinfection procedures on some properties of silicon dioxide reinforced Cosmesil M511 HTV maxillofacial silicone. Materials and Methods: One hundred and sixty (160) specimens were prepared by mixing 5% SiO2 nano particles and 0.5% intrinsic cream color into the silicone polymer according to manufacturer's instructions. Specimens were divided into 4 groups according to the performed test (tear strength, surface hardness, surface roughness and color) with 40 specimens each. Each group was further subdivided according to

A total of 60 cotton swabs are collected from patients suffering from burn wound and surgical site infections admitted to Baghdad Teaching Hospital and Burn Specialist Hospital in Baghdad city during 9/2013 to 11/2013. All cotton swabs are cultured initially on blood agar and MacConkey agar and subjected for standard bacteriological procedures for bacteriological diagnosis. Twenty samples out of sixty are identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa by conventional methods. The results of antibiotic susceptibility test illustrate that the antibiotics resistance rate of Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates is as follows:100% (2020) for ceftriaxone, cefepime and carbencillin, 70% (14/20) for amikacin, 65%(13/20) for tobramycin, ceftazidim and gentamycin,

A novel design and implementation of a cognitive methodology for the on-line auto-tuning robust PID controller in a real heating system is presented in this paper. The aim of the proposed work is to construct a cognitive control methodology that gives optimal control signal to the heating system, which achieve the following objectives: fast and precise search efficiency in finding the on- line optimal PID controller parameters in order to find the optimal output temperature response for the heating system. The cognitive methodology (CM) consists of three engines: breeding engine based Routh-Hurwitz criterion stability, search engine based particle
swarm optimization (PSO) and aggregation knowledge engine based cultural algorithm (CA)

Error control schemes became a necessity in network-on-chip (NoC) to improve reliability as the on-chip interconnect errors increase with the continuous shrinking of geometry. Accordingly, many researchers are trying to present multi-bit error correction coding schemes that perform a high error correction capability with the simplest design possible to minimize area and power consumption. A recent work, Multi-bit Error Correcting Coding with Reduced Link Bandwidth (MECCRLB), showed a huge reduction in area and power consumption compared to a well-known scheme, namely, Hamming product code (HPC) with Type-II HARQ. Moreover, the authors showed that the proposed scheme can correct 11 random errors which is considered a high

Prodigiosin, is a natural red pigment produced by various bacteria that firstly
characterized from Serratia marcescens. It is an alkaloid secondary metabolite with
a unique tripyrrol structure.This pigment is a promising drug owing to its reported
characteristics of having antifungal, immunosuppressive and anti-cancer activity. In
this study prodigiosin was produced by Serratia marcescens., which was isolated
from soil identified and characterized by morphology, Gram’s staining, biochemical
and carbohydrate fermentation tested and confirmed by the API 20E test.
From these samples, six isolates of Serratia marcescens( 24) % were obtained out
of 25 soil samples. Ability of these isolates in prodigiosin production

In this study 77 human isolates of Staphylococcus aureus were obtain from different clinical sources. The results showed that the number of isolates producing α-hemolysin was 32 isolates (41.55%) , while non- hemolysin producing was 45 isolates (58.45%) .The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of methicillin which were 32 micrograms \ ml. The effect of CD-Cholesterol ,Cholesterol ,Cyclodextran(CD) ,Methicillin and Phosphate Buffer Saline(PBS) on α- hemolysin activity was study and the hemolytic Titer was:8 ، 32.768 ,65.536 ,
140.737.488.355.32 , 4.961408E + 25 respectively, while the effect of the same effect with Titer 67.108.864 and low Titer with PBS 3.96140812E + 25. The α – hemolysin toxin was partialy purified by ammoni

Background: Dental casts come into direct contact with impression materials and other items that are contaminated by saliva and blood from a patient's mouth, leaving the casts susceptible to cross-contamination. The disinfectant solutions of the impression materials cause various adverse reactions. Therefore, disinfection of dental casts may be effective in preventing cross infection. This study was carried out to evaluate the surface hardness, dimensional accuracy, reproduction of details and surface porosity of type III, type IV and type IV extra hard dental stone after immersion in and spray by using SOLO and Sodium hypochlorite disinfectant solutions. Materials and methods: 240 Stone samples were prepared in rubber rings, A total of 60