The steel jetty selected for strengthening is in Baghdad city, over Tigris River, consists of 55 short spans, each of approximately 4 meters and one naviga-tional opening of 12 m. The bridge is 224 meters length and 8 meters in width. The strengthening system was designed to remove overstresses that occurred when the bridge was subjected to abnormal loads of 380 tons. A strengthening system which installed in spring 2008 was used where the main concept is to depend on added side supporting elements which impose reversal forces on the bridge to counteract most of the loads expected from the abnormal heavy loads. The bridge was load tested before and after the strengthening system was activated. The load test results indicate that the strengt

Carbon fibre reinforced polymers are widely used to strengthen steel structural elements. These structural elements are normally subjected to static, dynamic and fatigue loadings during their life-time. A number of studies have focused on the characteristics of CFRP sheets bonded to steel members under static, dynamic and fatigue loadings. However, there is a gap in understanding the bonding behaviour between CFRP laminates and steel members under impact loading. This paper shows the effect of different load rates from quasi-static to 300 × 103 mm/min on this bond. Two types of CFRP laminate, CFK 150/2000 and CFK 200/2000, were used to strengthen steel joints using Araldite 420 epoxy. The results show a significant bond strength enhancemen

The inhibitive action of Phenyl Thiourea (PTU) on the corrosion of mild steel in strong Hydrochloric acid, HCl, has been investigated by weight loss and potentiostatic polarization. The effect of PTU concentration, HCl concentration, and temperature on corrosion rate of mild steel were verified using 2 levels factorial design and surface response analysis through weight loss approach, while the electrochemical measurements were used to study the behavior of mild steel in 5-7N HCl at temperatures 30, 40 and 50 °C, in absence and presence of PTU. It was verified that all variables and their interaction were statistically significant. The adsorption of (PTU) is found to obey the Langmuir adsorption isotherm. The effect of temperature on th

Cladosporium sp. plays an important role in human health, it is one of the pathogenic fungi which cause allergy and asthma and most frequently isolated from airborne spores.  In this study, a couple of universal PCR primers were designed to identify the pathogenic fungi Cladosporium sp. according to conserved region 5.8S, 18S and 28S subunit ribosomal RNA gene in Cladosporium species. In silico RFLP-PCR were used to identify twenty-four Cladosporium strains. The results showed that the universal primer has the specificity to amplify the conserved region in 24 species as a band in virtual agarose gel. They also showed that the RFLP method is able to identify three Cladosporium spe

This study investigated the treatment of dairy wastewater using the electrocoagulation method with iron filings as electrodes. The study dealt with real samples collected from local factory for dairy products in Baghdad. The Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used to optimize five experimental variables at six levels for each variable, for estimating chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency. These variables were the distance between electrodes, detention time, dosage of NaCl as electrolyte, initial COD concentration, and current density. RSM was investigated the direct and complex interaction effects between parameters to estimate the optimum values. The respective optimum value was 1 cm for the distance between electrodes, (6

In order to investigate the presence of methicillin or multidrug resistant Staphylococcus aureus in food-chain especially Cows raw milk and white raw soft cheese and its whey, a total of 30 samples were collected randomly from different markets in Baghdad Province during December 2012 till February 2013, in which samples were analyzed by a standard isolation protocols of food microbiology with some modification processing by new, modern and rapid technology tools such as chromogenic medium Baird-Parker agar, Electronic RapIDTM Staph Plus Code Compendium Panel System (ERIC®) Dryspot Staphytect Plus and Penicillin Binding Protein (PBP2') Plus assays; as well as, studying the susceptibility of isolates to different selected antibiotics. The r

This study was conducted for evaluating the cytotoxic effect of heat stable enterotoxin a (STa) produced by enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli on the proliferation of primary cancer cell cultures, obtained from tumor samples that were collected from (13) cancer patients and as follows: (five colon cancer patients, two bladder cancer patients, two breast cancer patients, two stomach cancer patients and two lung cancer patients), and on normal cell line (rat embryonic fibroblast / REF) (in vitro) with the use of different concentrations starting from (1) mg/ml and ending with (0.0002) mg/ml by making two fold serial dilutions by using the 96- well microtiter plate, and in comparison with negative (PBS) and positive (MMC, at concentration

This paper represents an experimental study on the application of smart control represented by the use of the fuzzy logic controller. Two-link flexible manipulators that are used in airspace and military applications are made of flexible materials characterized by low frequency and damping ratio. To solve this problem, this paper proposes the use of smart materials (piezoelectric transducers), where each link is bonded with a pair of piezoelectric transducers that act as a sensor and another as an actuator. As the arm vibrates because of the movement generated by the motor, this voltage is controlled by a regulator inside the LABVIEW® 2020 software and sends the output control voltage to the piezoelectric actuator. Experimental results