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 each observed distress, the pavement condition surveys were conducted by actually walking through all the sections. Using these data, PCI was calculated utilizing Micro PAVER software. Dynatest Road Surface Profiler (RSP) was used to collect IRI data of all the sections. Using the SPSS software, linear and nonlinear regressions have been used for developing two models between PCI and IRI based on the collected data. These models have the coefficients of determination (R2) equal to 0.715 and 0.722 for linear and quadratic models. Finally, the results indicate the linear and quadratic models are acceptable to predict PCI from IRI directly.
In this paper, a fusion of K models of full-rank weighted nonnegative tensor factor two-dimensional deconvolution (K-wNTF2D) is proposed to separate the acoustic sources that have been mixed in an underdetermined reverberant environment. The model is adapted in an unsupervised manner under the hybrid framework of the generalized expectation maximization and multiplicative update algorithms. The derivation of the algorithm and the development of proposed full-rank K-wNTF2D will be shown. The algorithm also encodes a set of variable sparsity parameters derived from Gibbs distribution into the K-wNTF2D model. This optimizes each sub-model in K-wNTF2D with the required sparsity to model the time-varying variances of the sources in the s
... Show MoreDrip irrigation is one of the conservative irrigation techniques since it implies supplying water directly on the soil through the emitter; it can supply water and fertilizer directly into the root zone. An equation to estimate the wetted area in unsaturated soil is taking into calculating the water absorption by roots is simulated numerically using HYDRUS (2D/3D) software. In this paper, HYDRUS comprises analytical types of the estimate of different soil hydraulic properties. Used one soil type, sandy loam, with three types of crops; (corn, tomato, and sweet sorghum), different drip discharge, different initial soil moisture content was assumed, and different time durations. The relative error for the different hydrauli
... Show MoreRecently, wireless communication environments with high speeds and low complexity have become increasingly essential. Free-space optics (FSO) has emerged as a promising solution for providing direct connections between devices in such high-spectrum wireless setups. However, FSO communications are susceptible to weather-induced signal fluctuations, leading to fading and signal weakness at the receiver. To mitigate the effects of these challenges, several mathematical models have been proposed to describe the transition from weak to strong atmospheric turbulence, including Rayleigh, lognormal, Málaga, Nakagami-m, K-distribution, Weibull, Negative-Exponential, Inverse-Gaussian, G-G, and Fisher-Snedecor F distributions. This paper extensive
... Show MoreA novel planar type antenna printed on a high permittivity Rogers’ substrate is proposed for early stage microwave breast cancer detection. The design is based on a p-shaped wide-slot structure with microstrip feeding circuit to eliminate losses of transmission. The design parameters are optimized resulting in a good reflection coefficient at −10 dB from 4.5 to 10.9 GHz. Imaging result using inhomogeneous breast phantom indicates that the proposed antenna is capable of detecting a 5 mm size cancerous tumor embedded inside the fibroglandular region with dielectric contrast between the target and the surrounding materials ranging from 1.7 : 1 to 3.6 : 1.
Type 2 diabetes mellitus which abbreviate as T2DM is a complex endocrine and metabolic disorder arisingfrom genetic and environmental factors interaction which in turn induce various degrees of insulin functionalalteration on peripheral tissues. Globally, T2DM has develop into a public health problem. Therefore, Thestudy included (75) patients(37 female and 38 males) suffering from T2DM who visit al-kadhimiya teachinghospital with age range 20-80 years and (70) as healthy controls with age range 20-70 years. All studiedgroups were evaluated CMV IgG by ELISA,B. urea, S. Creatinine, cholesterol and triglyceride the resultsshowed that B.urea, S.creatinine and serum cholesterol showed a non-significant differences between studiedgroup,
... Show MoreA method is developed for the determination of iron (III) in pharmaceutical preparations by coupling cloud point extraction (CPE) and UV-Vis spectrophotometry. The method is based on the reaction of Fe(III) with excess drug ciprofloxacin (CIPRO) in dilute H2SO4, forming a hydrophobic Fe(III)- CIPRO complex which can be extracted into a non-ionic surfactant Triton X-114, and iron ions are determined spectrophotometrically at absorption maximum of 437 nm. Several variables which impact on the extraction and determination of Fe (III) are optimized in order to maximize the extraction efficiency and improve the sensitivity of the method. The interferences study is also considered to check the accuracy of the procedure. The results hav
... Show MoreSensibly highlighting the hidden structures of many real-world networks has attracted growing interest and triggered a vast array of techniques on what is called nowadays community detection (CD) problem. Non-deterministic metaheuristics are proved to competitively transcending the limits of the counterpart deterministic heuristics in solving community detection problem. Despite the increasing interest, most of the existing metaheuristic based community detection (MCD) algorithms reflect one traditional language. Generally, they tend to explicitly project some features of real communities into different definitions of single or multi-objective optimization functions. The design of other operators, however, remains canonical lacking any inte
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