Background. To identify the most common retention protocols practiced by Iraqi orthodontists using a specially designed e-survey. Furthermore, this study aimed to assess the effect of sociodemographic factors on the participant’s choice. Methods. Two hundred and twenty-five questionnaires with 23 multiple choice questions were sent to members of the Iraqi Orthodontic Society. The questionnaire was organized into four sections representing information about sociodemographic status of the orthodontists, factors affecting the selection of the retention system, commonly used retainers in the upper arch and lower arch, and duration of the retention system. The chi-square test was used to test the significant association between differe

       In terms of the core nucleus plus valence nucleon, shell-model calculations using two model spaces and interactions, the relationship between a nucleus' proton skin, and the difference in proton radii of mirror pairs of nuclei with the same mass number are investigated. In this work, two pairs of mirror nuclei will be studied: 17Ne-17N and 23Al-23Ne. For 17Ne-17N nuclei, p-shell and mixing of psd orbits are adopted with Cohen-Kurath (ckii) and psdsu3 interactions. While for 23Al-23Ne, the sd-shell and sdpf shell are adopted with the universal shell model (USD) and sdpfwa interactions. Also, the ground state density distributions, elastic form factors, and root mean square radii of these pairs' nuclei are studied and com

This paper presents the design of a longitudinal controller for an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). This paper proposed the dual loop (inner-outer loop) control based on the intelligent algorithm. The inner feedback loop controller is a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) to provide robust (adaptive) stability. In contrast, the outer loop controller is based on Fuzzy-PID (Proportional, Integral, and Derivative) algorithm to provide reference signal tracking. The proposed dual controller is to control the position (altitude) and velocity (airspeed) of an aircraft. An adaptive Unscented Kalman Filter (AUKF) is employed to track the reference signal and is decreased the Gaussian noise. The mathematical model of aircraft

New data on jumping spiders (Salticidae) and tangle-web spiders (Theridiidae) of Armenia are provided on the basis of recently collected specimens in various regions of Armenia. One species, Ballus rufipes (Simon, 1868) is recorded as new to the Caucasus Region, in addition to the following species: Neon reticulatus (Blackwall, 1853), Pellenes brevis (Simon, 1868), Salticus scenicus (Clerck, 1757) and Synageles dalmaticus (Keyserling, 1863) that belong to a family Salticidae, are recorded in Armenia for the first time.
A further 7 species of Theridiidae are recorded in Armenia for the first time Kochiura aulica (C. L. Koch, 1838), Steatoda albomaculata (De Geer, 1778), Steatoda bipunctata (Linnaeus, 1758), Steatoda castanea Clerk, 175

<span>One of the main difficulties facing the certified documents documentary archiving system is checking the stamps system, but, that stamps may be contains complex background and surrounded by unwanted data. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to isolate background and to remove noise that may be surrounded stamp. Our proposed method comprises of four phases, firstly, we apply k-means algorithm for clustering stamp image into a number of clusters and merged them using ISODATA algorithm. Secondly, we compute mean and standard deviation for each remaining cluster to isolate background cluster from stamp cluster. Thirdly, a region growing algorithm is applied to segment the image and then choosing the connected regi

Carbonized nonwoven nanofibers composite were fabricated using the electrospinning method of a polymeric solution composite followed by heat treatment including stabilization and calcination steps. The spun polymeric solution was a binary polymer mixture/organic solvent. In this study, two types of polymers (Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and Polyethylene glycol (PEG)) were used separately as a copolymer with the base polymer (Polyacrylonitrile (PAN)) to prepare a binary polymer mixture in a mixing ratio of 50:50. The prepared precursor solutions were used to prepare the precursor nanofibers composite (PAN: PMMA) and (PAN: PEG).  The fabricated precursors nonwoven fibers composite were stabilized and carbonized to produce carbon nonw

Nanosponges (NS) of etodolac(ETO) was prepared using the emulsion solvent diffusion method ; the effects of drug: polymer ratio, the effect of level concentration of internal phase and stirring time and other variables that effect on the physical characteristics of NS were investigated and characterized, The selected formula was lyophilized then incorporated into hydrogel ; which also evaluated .The results show that the formulation that contain Drug: PVA:EC in ratio 1:3:2 is the best with smallest particle size 40.2±0.098 with polydispersibility0.005 and in vitro release 97.6±0.11%, , ETO NS Carbopol hydrogel produced a significant(p<0.05) improvement of the in vitro release than pure ETO hydrogel.

<p>In this paper, a simple color image compression system has been proposed using image signal decomposition. Where, the RGB image color band is converted to the less correlated YUV color model and the pixel value (magnitude) in each band is decomposed into 2-values; most and least significant. According to the importance of the most significant value (MSV) that influenced by any simply modification happened, an adaptive lossless image compression system is proposed using bit plane (BP) slicing, delta pulse code modulation (Delta PCM), adaptive quadtree (QT) partitioning followed by an adaptive shift encoder. On the other hand, a lossy compression system is introduced to handle the least significant value (LSV), it is based on

Poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA)/poly(caprolactone) (PCL) and two types of organoclay (OMMT) including a fatty amide and ocatdecylamine montmorillonite (FA-MMT and ODA-MMT) were employed to produce polymer nanocomposites by melt blending. Materials were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), elemental analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Mechanical properties were also investigated for these nanocomposites. The nanocomposites showed increasing mechanical properties and thermal stability. XRD results indicated that the materials formed nanocomposites. SEM morphology showed that increasing content of OMMT reduc