Conventional concretes are nearly unbendable, and just 0.1 percent of strain potential makes them incredibly brittle and stiff. This absence of bendability is a significant cause of strain failure and has been a guiding force in the production of an elegant substance, bendable concrete, also known as engineered cement composites, abbreviated as ECC. This type of concrete is capable of displaying dramatically increased flexibility. ECC is reinforced with micromechanical polymer fibers. ECC usually uses a 2 percent volume of small, disconnected fibers. Thus, bendable concrete deforms but without breaking any further than conventional concrete. This research aims to involve this type of concrete, bendable concrete, that will give solutions for concrete deficiencies. Two types of Portland Limestone Cement were used, Karasta (CK) and Tasluja (CT). Four mixes were adopted, polypropylene fibers (PP) and polyvinyl alcohol solution (PVA) were conducted to prepare the mixes. The tests were carried out at the age of 28 days of water curing. Best results were presented for mixes containing pp fibers and PVA solution than those without fibers for drying shrinkage and creep tests
In every country in the world, there are a number of amputees who have been exposed to some accidents that led to the loss of their upper limbs. The aim of this study is to suggest a system for real-time classification of five classes of shoulder girdle motions for high-level upper limb amputees using a pattern recognition system. In the suggested system, the wavelet transform was utilized for feature extraction, and the extreme learning machine was used as a classifier. The system was tested on four intact-limbed subjects and one amputee, with eight channels involving five electromyography channels and three-axis accelerometer sensor. The study shows that the suggested pattern recognition system has the ability to classify the sho
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Objective: The present study investigates whether the exposure to low-power diode laser induces denaturation in red blood cell (RBC) membrane protein composition, and determines the irradiation time for when denaturation of membrane protein process begins. Background: A low-energy laser has been used extensively in medical applications. Several studies indicated significant positive effects of laser therapy on biological systems. In contrast, other studies reported that laser induced unwanted changes in cell structure and biological systems. The present work studied the effect of irradiation time of low-power diode laser on the structure of membrane proteins of human RBCs. Materials and methods: The RBC suspension was divided into five equa
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This paper is concerned with finding solutions to free-boundary inverse coefficient problems. Mathematically, we handle a one-dimensional non-homogeneous heat equation subject to initial and boundary conditions as well as non-localized integral observations of zeroth and first-order heat momentum. The direct problem is solved for the temperature distribution and the non-localized integral measurements using the Crank–Nicolson finite difference method. The inverse problem is solved by simultaneously finding the temperature distribution, the time-dependent free-boundary function indicating the location of the moving interface, and the time-wise thermal diffusivity or advection velocities. We reformulate the inverse problem as a non-
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The monthly time series of the Total Suspended Solids (TSS) concentrations in Euphrates River at Nasria was analyzed as a time series. The data used for the analysis was the monthly series during (1977-2000).
The series was tested for nonhomogenity and found to be nonhomogeneous. A significant positive jump was observed after 1988. This nonhomogenity was removed using a method suggested by Yevichevich (7). The homogeneous series was then normalized using Box and Cox (2) transformation. The periodic component of the series was fitted using harmonic analyses, and removed from the series to obtain the dependent stochastic component. This component was then modeled using first order autoregressive model (Markovian chain). The above a
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Fourier Transform-Infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy was used to analyze gasoline engine oil (SAE 5W20) samples that were exposed to seven different oxidation times (0 h, 24 h, 48 h, 72 h, 96 h, 120 h, and 144 h) to determine the best wavenumbers and wavenumber ranges for the discrimination of the oxidation times. The thermal oxidation process generated oil samples with varying total base number (TBN) levels. Each wavenumber (400–3900 cm−1) and wavenumber ranges identified from the literature and this study were statistically analyzed to determine which wavenumbers and wavenumber ranges could discriminate among all oxidation times. Linear regression was used with the best wavenumbers and wavenumber ranges to predict oxidation time.
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In solar-thermal adsorption/desorption processes, it is not always possible to preserve equal operating times for the adsorption/desorption modes due to the fluctuating supply nature of the source which largely affects the system’s operating conditions. This paper seeks to examine the impact of adopting unequal adsorption/desorption times on the entire cooling performance of solar adsorption systems. A cooling system with silica gel–water as adsorbent-adsorbate pair has been built and tested under the climatic condition of Iraq. A mathematical model has been established to predict the system performance, and the results are successfully validated via the experimental findings. The results show that, the system can be operational
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Rapid worldwide urbanization and drastic population growth have increased the demand for new road construction, which will cause a substantial amount of natural resources such as aggregates to be consumed. The use of recycled concrete aggregate could be one of the possible ways to offset the aggregate shortage problem and reduce environmental pollution. This paper reports an experimental study of unbound granular material using recycled concrete aggregate for pavement subbase construction. Five percentages of recycled concrete aggregate obtained from two different sources with an originally designed compressive strength of 20–30 MPa as well as 31–40 MPa at three particle size levels, i.e., coarse, fine, and extra fine, were test
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Eleven hymenopterous species: two braconids, seven eulophids and two pteromalids
parasitized the larvae of Phytomyza horticola Goureau. The activity of the parasites began at
the end of April and evidently increased during May. The female of the parasites fed and
parasitized mostly on the second and third larval instars of P. horticola . Diglyphus iseae
Walker and Cirrospilus vittatus Walker were dominant larval parasites. Chrysocharis
pentheus Walker and Pediobius acantha Walker were main pupal parasites.
Variation orders are an on-going phenomenon in construction and industry projects worldwide, particularly in the province of Sulaimani, where the project's damage from cost and schedule overrun because of variation orders. However, the effect on project costs and time overrun of variation order has yet to be identified. This study evaluates the impact of variation orders on the cost and time off in the Sulaimani governorate. Two hundred twenty-eight projects from various construction sectors built between 2007-2012 were adopted to calculate the contract cost and schedule overruns due to variation orders. Data analysis was applied in the study were descriptive statistics. One-way ANOVA was also applied to determine w
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