PVC/Kaolinite composites were prepared by the melt intercalation method. Mechanical properties, thermal properties, flammability and water absorption percentage of prepared samples were tested. Mechanical characteristic such as tensile strength, elongation at break; hardness and impact strength (charpy type) were measured for all samples. It was found that the tensile strength and elongation at break of PVC composites decreased with increasing kaolinite loading. Also, the hardness of the composites increases with increase in filler content .The impact strength of the composites at the beginning increases at lower kaolinite loadings is due to the lack of kaolin adhesion to the matrix. However, at higher kaolin loadings. This severe agglomeration of the filler due to its high surface energy creates many crack-initiation and stress-concentration sites, which are sensitive to impact stresses and cause detrimental effects on the impact properties of the composite. There is a general increase in absorption rate with increase in kaolin content. Thermal properties of PVC /kaolinite composites were characterized using Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and thermal conductivity analyzer. The results showed Tg shifted toward higher temperature for kaolinite composites compared to neat PVC .Also, thermal conductivity measurement value and effusivity increased with increasing filler loading .Heat capacity decreased with increasing filler content. The higher the filler content the higher burning time, the lower rate of burning and the lower height of the flame which are evident at 12wt. % for kaolinite.
Carbon dioxide geo-sequestration (CGS) into sediments in the form of (gas) hydrates is one proposed method for reducing anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere and, thus reducing global warming and climate change. However, there is a serious lack of understanding of how such CO2 hydrate forms and exists in sediments. We thus imaged CO2 hydrate distribution in sandstone, and investigated the hydrate morphology and cluster characteristics via x-ray micro-computed tomography in 3D in-situ. A substantial amount of gas hydrate (∼17% saturation) was observed, and the stochastically distributed hydrate clusters followed power-law relations with respect to their size distributions and surface area-volume relationships. The layer-
... Show MoreNon Uniform Illumination biological image often leads to diminish structures and inhomogeneous intensities of the image. Algorithm has been proposed using Morphological Operations different types of structuring elements including (dick, line, square and ball) with the same parameters of (15).To correct the non-uniform illumination and enhancement biological images, the non-uniform background illumination have been removed from image, using (contrast adjustment, histogram equalization and adaptive histogram equalization). The used basic approach to extract the statistical features values from gray level of co-occurrence matrices (GLCM) can show the typical values for features content of biological images that can be in form of shape or sp
... Show MoreNews headlines are key elements in spreading news. They are unique texts written in a special language which enables readers understand the overall nature and importance of the topic. However, this special language causes difficulty for readers in understanding the headline. To illuminate this difficulty, it is argued that a pragmatic analysis from a speech act theory perspective is a plausible tool for a headline analysis. The main objective of the study is to pragmatically analyze the most frequently employed types of speech acts in the news headlines covering COVID-19 in Aljazeera English website. To this end, Bach and Harnish's (1979) Taxonomy of Speech Acts has been adopted to analyze the data. Thirty headlines have been collected f
... Show MoreBackground: To assess the alveolar bone crest level (ABCL) by Cone Beam Computed To-mography (CBCT) and to investigate several variables as predictors for the height of the alveolar bone in adolescents. Materials and methods: Age, sex, and ethnic groups were rec-orded for each patient. CBCT images were used to obtain measurements of the interproximal alveolar bone level from the cementoenamel junction (CEJ) to the alveolar crest. The highest measurement in each sextant was recorded along with any presence of a vertical bone defect or calculus. Results: Total of 720 measurements were recorded for 120 subjects. No vertical bony defects or calculus were observed radiographically. Statistically significant (P< 0.05) differences were observed be
... Show MoreFinding the shortest route in wireless mesh networks is an important aspect. Many techniques are used to solve this problem like dynamic programming, evolutionary algorithms, weighted-sum techniques, and others. In this paper, we use dynamic programming techniques to find the shortest path in wireless mesh networks due to their generality, reduction of complexity and facilitation of numerical computation, simplicity in incorporating constraints, and their onformity to the stochastic nature of some problems. The routing problem is a multi-objective optimization problem with some constraints such as path capacity and end-to-end delay. Single-constraint routing problems and solutions using Dijkstra, Bellman-Ford, and Floyd-Warshall algorith
... Show MoreThe present study aims to detect CTX-M-type ESBL from Escherichia coli clinical isolates and to analyze their antibotic susceptibility patterns. One hundred of E. coli isolates were collected from different clinical samples from a tertiary hospital. ESBL positivity was determined by the disk diffusion method. PCR used for amplification of CTX-M-type ESBL produced by E. coli. Out of 100 E. coli isolates, twenty-four isolates (24%) were ESBL-producers. E. coli isolated from pus was the most frequent clinical specimen that produced ESBL (41.66%) followed by urine (34.21%), respiratory (22.23%), and blood (19.05%). After PCR amplification of these 24 isolates, 10 (41.66%) isolates were found to possess CTX-M genes. The CTX-M type ESBL
... Show MoreBackground: Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is caused of 85% of all lung cancers. Among the most important factors for lung tumor growth and proliferation are the tyrosine kinase receptors that coded by the epidermal growth factor recep-tor (EGFR) gene. Activation of EGFR ultimately leads to developing of lung cancer. The present study was undertaken with an objective to detect EGFR mutations in bronchial wash from Iraqi patients with NSCLC before treatment. Methods: DNA was extracted from bronchial wash samples collected from 50 patients with NSCLC by using a Qiamp DNA Mini Kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany). Then, EGFR mutations were determined by using real-time RCR combined with two technologies, Amplification Refractory Mutation System (
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