The analysis of rigid pavements is a complex mission for many reasons. First, the loading conditions include the repetition of parts of the applied loads (cyclic loads), which produce fatigue in the pavement materials. Additionally, the climatic conditions reveal an important role in the performance of the pavement since the expansion or contraction induced by temperature differences may significantly change the supporting conditions of the pavement. There is an extra difficulty because the pavement structure is made of completely different materials, such as concrete, steel, and soil, with problems related to their interfaces like contact or friction. Because of the problem's difficulty, the finite element simulation is

This study presents experimental and numerical investigations on seven one-way, reinforced concrete (RC) slabs with a new technique of slab weight reduction using polystyrene-embedded arched blocks (PEABs). All slabs had the same dimensions, steel reinforcement, and concrete compressive strength. One of these slabs was a solid slab, which was taken as a control slab, while the other six slabs were cast with PEABs. The main variables were the ratio of the length of the PEABs to the length of the slab (lp/L) and the ratio of the height of the PEABs to the total slab depth (hP/H). The minimum decrease in the ultimate load capacity was about 6% with a minimum reduction in the slab weight of 15%. In contrast, the maximum decrease in the

Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 DPP-4 inhibition has remained one of the most established ways in treating type 2 diabetes mellitus. Therefore, the development of improved DPP-4 inhibiters is consideredan essential strategy in the design of antidiabetic drugs. In the present study, a structure-based virtual approach was considered to design and evaluate new sitagliptin analogues with improved binding stability and pharmacokinetic properties. A virtual library consisting of 15,034 different compounds was created and then screened using a hierarchical Glide docking protocol (HTVS, SP, and XP). Using integrated computational analyses, the top ranked compounds were further assessed. Based on ADMET predictions, MM-GBSA binding free energy

Background: Aggressive global pandemics such as COVID-19 can disrupt societies tragically, imposing a suspension to almost every field throughout the world; the orthodontic treatment and follow-up is no exemption. Objectives: To provide practical recommendations about resuming treatment for orthodontic patients during the “Return-to-Practice” phase and emphasize the validity of certain digital interceptive measures post global pandemics to minify the risk of infection spread. Materials and Methods: Sources of information pertaining to orthodontic/therapeutic implications during the COVID-19 pandemic were searched using electronic databases including COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19 2020), Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed, M

Sustainable development has recently gained significant attention in the field of water Quality (WQ), which is critical for a healthy lifestyle. Our work suggests an intelligent hybrid model for assessing water quality using a water portability dataset, which was used to evaluate the water quality. The dataset contains physical and chemical features such as pH, Organic Carbon, sulfate, etc. Based on the combination of a Decision Tree Algorithm (DTA) and fuzzy logic Approaches, the findings revealed that sulfate was the most important factor in the model, with an accuracy of 1.00, followed by pH with an accuracy of 0.9667, and solids and chloramines with an accuracy of 0.95. The other parameters achieved a similar accuracy of 0.9167, showing

The growing emphasis on sustainable construction has prompted interest in repurposing agricultural by-products as alternatives to conventional aggregates in asphalt mixtures. While natural sand is widely available, its use can lead to less stable, more tender mixes, which can limit various specifications. This study explores the potential of palm date seed (PDS) powder as a partial and full replacement for natural sand in asphalt concrete. A series of laboratory tests was conducted to evaluate the effect of PDS incorporation on the mechanical and durability performance of asphalt mixtures, including Marshall properties, resilient modulus, fatigue resistance, moisture susceptibility, and permanent deformation. Additionally, microstructural a

The present study investigated the use of pretreated fish bone (PTFB) as a new surface, natural waste and low-cost adsorbent for the adsorption of Methyl green (MG, as model toxic basic dye) from aqueous solutions. The functional groups and surface morphology of the untreated fish bone (FB) and pretreated fish bone were characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS),respectively. The effect of operating parameters including contact time, pH, adsorbent dose, temperature, and inorganic salt was evaluated. Langmuir, Freundlich and Temkin adsorption isotherm models were studied and the results showed that the adsorption of basic dye followed Freundlich iso