A ‘locking-bolt’ demountable shear connector (LBDSC) is proposed to facilitate the deconstruction and reuse of steel-concrete composite structures, in line with achieving a more sustainable construction design paradigm. The LBDSC is comprised of a grout-filled steel tube and a geometrically compatible partially threaded bolt. The latter has a geometry that ‘locks’ the bolt in compatible holes predrilled on the steel flange and eliminates initial slip and construction tolerance issues. The structural behaviour of the LBDSC is evaluated through nine pushout tests using a horizontal test setup. The effects of the tube thickness, strength of concrete slab, and strength of infilled grout on the shear resistance, initial stiffness, and ductility of the LBDSC are assessed. The experimental results show that the LBDSC can achieve higher shear resistance and similar initial stiffness as compared to traditional welded studs. In addition, all tested LBDSCs exhibited slip capacities ranging from 14 to 32 mm and can be classified as ductile shear connectors according to Eurocode 4. A detailed finite element model was also created and found to be reliable to reproduce the experimental behaviour. Parametric studies were subsequently conducted using the validated model to study further parameters and generalise the experimental results. Due to the specific test setup, non-negligible uplift forces were generated in the connector and the potential implications are discussed.
The current study aims to identify the artistic expression as well as the aspects of artistic expression by the painting among the kindergarten children. In order to fulfill the research's goals, a sample of (400) children were chosen randomly from 19 public kindergartens of 6 directorates at Al-Rusafa and Al-Karkh in Baghdad city. The children were asked to draw a particular view. The researcher has adopted Al-Hamedawi scale (2009) consisted of (16) items, which was exposed to group of (25) experts in psychology, education, measurement and evaluation, artistic education by painting and plastics to show the items reliability. As the researcher applied T-test for 
... Show MoreSolvents are important components in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, and they are increasingly being used in catalytic reactions. Solvents have a significant influence on the kinetics and thermodynamics of reactions, and they can significantly change product selectivity. Solvents can influence product selectivity, conversion rates, and reaction rates. However, solvents have received a lot of attention in the field of green chemistry. This is due to the large amount of solvent that is frequently used in a process or formulation, particularly during the purification steps. However, neither the solvent nor the active ingredient in a formulation is directly responsible for the reaction product's composition. Because these ch
... Show MoreCryptographic applications demand much more of a pseudo-random-sequence
generator than do most other applications. Cryptographic randomness does not mean just
statistical randomness, although that is part of it. For a sequence to be cryptographically
secure pseudo-random, it must be unpredictable.
The random sequences should satisfy the basic randomness postulates; one of them is
the run postulate (sequences of the same bit). These sequences should have about the same
number of ones and zeros, about half the runs should be of length one, one quarter of length
two, one eighth of length three, and so on.The distribution of run lengths for zeros and ones
should be the same. These properties can be measured determinis
Abstract Aim: Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder which affects communication and social interaction of children. It is a heterogeneous disease with various clinical presentations. Some genes are involved in its pathogenesis. It has been suggested that environmental exposure to lead can increase the risk of autism. The aim of our study was to compare blood lead levels among autistic and non-autistic children. Material and Method: This retrospective study included 107 children (60 with autism and 47 without autism) referred from the different Iraqi provinces, in the years 2015, 2016 and 2017, to the poisoning consultation center in Baghdad. Data collection including age, gender, residence, referral source, family history and blood lead l
... Show MoreThis paper proposes feedback linearization control (FBLC) based on function approximation technique (FAT) to regulate the vibrational motion of a smart thin plate considering the effect of axial stretching. The FBLC includes designing a nonlinear control law for the stabilization of the target dynamic system while the closedloop dynamics are linear with ensured stability. The objective of the FAT is to estimate the cubic nonlinear restoring force vector using the linear parameterization of weighting and orthogonal basis function matrices. Orthogonal Chebyshev polynomials are used as strong approximators for adaptive schemes. The proposed control architecture is applied to a thin plate with a large deflection that stimulates the axial loadin
... Show MoreMost Internet of Vehicles (IoV) applications are delay-sensitive and require resources for data storage and tasks processing, which is very difficult to afford by vehicles. Such tasks are often offloaded to more powerful entities, like cloud and fog servers. Fog computing is decentralized infrastructure located between data source and cloud, supplies several benefits that make it a non-frivolous extension of the cloud. The high volume data which is generated by vehicles’ sensors and also the limited computation capabilities of vehicles have imposed several challenges on VANETs systems. Therefore, VANETs is integrated with fog computing to form a paradigm namely Vehicular Fog Computing (VFC) which provide low-latency services to mo
... Show MoreThe convergence speed is the most important feature of Back-Propagation (BP) algorithm. A lot of improvements were proposed to this algorithm since its presentation, in order to speed up the convergence phase. In this paper, a new modified BP algorithm called Speeding up Back-Propagation Learning (SUBPL) algorithm is proposed and compared to the standard BP. Different data sets were implemented and experimented to verify the improvement in SUBPL.
Toni Morrison (1931-), the first African-American winner of Noble Prize in literature (1993) and the winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, regards herself as the historian of African-American people. She does not think of her writings as literature but as a sacred book dedicated to explore the interior lives of blacks. She creates history by disregarding European standards and the white man's view of African- Americans. She adopts her people's point of view, invests their heritage, voices their pains and uses their vernacular. She even writes to a black audience. She establishes the black novel by depicting the blackness of American literature. In choos
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