Flexible pavements are considered an essential element of transportation infrastructure. So, evaluations of flexible pavement performance are necessary for the proper management of transportation infrastructure. Pavement condition index (PCI) and international roughness index (IRI) are common indices applied to evaluate pavement surface conditions. However, the pavement condition surveys to calculate PCI are costly and time-consuming as compared to IRI. This article focuses on developing regression models that predict PCI from IRI. Eighty-three flexible pavement sections, with section length equal to 250 m, were selected in Al-Diwaniyah, Iraq, to develop PCI-IRI relationships. In terms of the quantity and severity of eac

This paper proposes a neuro-fuzzy system to model β-glucosidase activity based on the reaction’s pH level and temperature. The developed fuzzy inference system includes two input variables (pH level and temperature) and one output (enzyme activity). The multi-input fuzzy inference system was developed in two stages: first, developing a single input-single output fuzzy inference system for each input variable (pH, temperature) separately, using the robust adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) approach. The neural network learning techniques were used to tune the membership functions based on previously published experimental data for β-glucosidase. Second, each input’s optimized membership functions from the ANF

A modified chemical method was used to prepare titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2 NPs), which were diagnosed by several techniques: X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared, field emission scaning electron microscopy, energy disperse X-ray, and UV-visible spectroscopy, which proved the success of the preparation process at the nanoscale level. Where the titanium oxide particles have an average particle size equal to 6.8 nm, titanium dioxide particles were used in the process of adsorption of Congo red dye from its aqueous solutions using a batch system. The titanium oxide particles gave an adsorption efficiency of Congo red dye up to more than 79 %. The experimental data of the adsorption process were analyzed with kinetic models and

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disorder of the carbohydrate, protein and fat metabolism, resulting in increased blood glucose levels. Various complications of diabetes have been described with periodontitis being added as the sixth complication of diabetes mellitus. Matrix metalloproteinase-8 (MMP-8) has been identified as major tissue-destructive enzyme in periodontal disease. MMP-8 is released from neutrophils in a latent, inactive pro form and becomes activated during periodontal inflammation by independent and/or combined actions of host-derived inflammatory mediators .C-reactive protein is a systemic marker released during the acute phase of an inflammatory response. Subjects, materials and methods: Total samples

Aluminum oxide thin films were prepared by dc reactive sputtering technique using different mixing ratios of argon and oxygen gases (90:10, 70:30, 50:50, 30:70, and 10:90). These films were characterized to introduce their crystalline structures, surface morphology, and elemental composition. A progressive transition occurs from a predominantly amorphous to a highly crystalline Al2O3 film as the oxygen content in the Ar:O2 gas mixture is increased. Increasing the oxygen content leads to a progressive decrease in surface roughness, resulting in smoother and more uniform films with finer granular features. The oxygen-rich environments yield the smoothest surfaces, while argon-rich environments result in significantly rougher surfaces. These f

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin films were prepared under different pressures with values (15, 30, 60 and 120) Pa using the DC reactive magnetron homemade system with mixed gases of argon and oxygen in ratio (50:50). The result of X-ray diffraction patterns discovered that the structure of the deposited films was polycrystalline, including the phase of anatase. All the appeared peaks were matched to the planes (101), (004), (105), and (211) of diffracted states. Both the intensities and the number of the appeared peaks are declined according to the increased pressure, and the plane of (101) is be considered the preferential grown plane, it is taking a maximum texture factor. Both the lattice constant and the atomic inter-planer spacing take th

     Cloth simulation and animation has been the topic of research since the mid-80's in the field of computer graphics. Enforcing incompressible is very important in real time simulation. Although, there are great achievements in this regard, it still suffers from unnecessary time consumption in certain steps that is common in real time applications.   This research develops a real-time cloth simulator for a virtual human character (VHC) with wearable clothing. This research achieves success in cloth simulation on the VHC through enhancing the position-based dynamics (PBD) framework by computing a series of positional constraints which implement constant densities. Also, the self-collision and collision wit

Abstract. This study presents experimental and numerical investigation on the effectiveness of electrode geometry on flushing and debris removal in Electrical Discharge Drilling (EDD) process. A new electrode geometry, namely side-cut electrode, was designed and manufactured based on circular electrode geometry. Several drilling operations were performed on stainless steel 304 using rotary tubular electrodes with circular and side-cut geometries. Drilling performance was characterized by Material Removal Rate (MRR), Electrode Wear Rate (EWR), and Tool Wear Ratio (TWR). Dimensional features and surface quality of drilled holes were evaluated based on Overcut (OC), Hole Depth (HD), and Surface Roughness (SR). Three-dimensional

In this study a concentration of uranium was measured for twenty two samples of soil distributed in many regions (algolan, almoalmeen, alaskary and nasal streets) from Falluja Cityin AL-Anbar Governorate in addition to other region (alandlos street) as a back ground on the Falluja City that there is no military operations happened on it. The uranium concentrations in soil samples measured by using fission tracks registration in (PM-355) track detector that caused by the bombardment of (U) with thermal neutrons from (241Am-Be) neutron source that has flux of (5×103n cm-2 s-1). The concentrations values were calculated by a comparison with standard samples. The results shows that the uranium concentrations algolan street varies from(1.