This study expands the state of the art in studies that assess torsional retrofit of reinforced concrete (RC) multi-cell box girders with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips. The torsional behavior of non-damaged and pre-damaged RC multi-cell box girder specimens externally retrofitted by CFRP strips was investigated through a series of laboratory experiments. It was found that retrofitting the pre-damaged specimens with CFRP strips increased the ultimate torsional capacity by more than 50% as compared to the un-damaged specimens subjected to equivalent retrofitting. This indicated that the retrofit has been less effective for the girder specimen that did not develop distortion beforehand as a result of pre-loading. From

This paper critically looks at the studies that investigated the Social Network Sites in the Arab region asking whether they made a practical addition to the field of information and communication sciences or not. The study tried to lift the ambiguity of the variety of names, as well as the most important theoretical and methodological approaches used by these studies highlighting its scientific limitations. The research discussed the most important concepts used by these studies such as Interactivity, Citizen Journalism, Public Sphere, and Social Capital and showed the problems of using them because each concept comes out of a specific view to these websites. The importation of these concepts from a cultural and social context to an Ara

Existing leachate models over–or underestimates leachate generation by up to three orders of magnitude. Practical experiments show that channeled flow in waste leads to rapid discharge of large leachate volumes and heterogeneous moisture distribution. In order to more accurately predict leachate generation, leachate models must be improved. To predict moisture movement through waste, the two–domain PREFLO, are tested. Experimental waste and leachate flow values are compared with model predictions. When calibrated with experimental parameters, the PREFLO provides estimates of breakthrough time. In the short term, field capacity has to be reduced to 0.12 and effective storage and hydraulic conductivity of the waste must be increased to

  This research is interested in studying the constant and the variable within the signing reality in Iraqi Kurdistan region, and the researcher tries to tackle the importance of this topic within a search that serves the Kurdish culture, and contribute to its intellectual settlement, and introducing it to centers concerned with studying singing and music science in any civilized environment, whether inside or outside the territory of Kurdistan region. We see that this research which dealt with the topic (the constant and the variable in the Kurdish signing between the past and the present) deserves research and investigation for all its causes, being one of the academic necessities that contribute in identifying the historic artist

Transient drop in the heart beat or transient heart block (AVB) may be consider the main cause of syncope or presyncope inpatients with bifascicular block and syncope According to the Guidelines for cardiac pacing pacemaker consider part of treatment. Aims of our study were to evaluate whether there is role for EPS in patients BFB and to evaluate the symptoms after pacing. 42 patients were enrolled in this study, with mean age value (63.4± 12.2years), suffer from interventricular conductive defect and syncope; patients underwent EPS on admission time, and pacemaker implantation accordingly and programmed follow up for the device in the last four years. Our patients were 25 (59.5%) male and 17 (40.5%)female, all of them with syncope o

The levels of shooting in basketball not very good appears un healthy phenomenon for age stages especially youth players on Iraq and therefore there is lower level in skills especially shooting that seems the players represent their players not good levels which cause difficult in choosing players for youth national team. The research sample were youth teams in Baghdad for season 2012-2013 their birth 1996 and the number teams (7) and after getting results and treat it statically the important ones were : there is a large number of failure attempts on success ones in basic shooting in basketball for youth teams in Baghdad teams (2012-2013) season and basic shooting have effective participation (positive relation) in youth teams ranking in B

Using watermarking techniques and digital signatures can better solve the problems of digital images transmitted on the Internet like forgery, tampering, altering, etc. In this paper we proposed invisible fragile watermark and MD-5 based algorithm for digital image authenticating and tampers detecting in the Discrete Wavelet Transform DWT domain. The digital image is decomposed using 2-level DWT and the middle and high frequency sub-bands are used for watermark and digital signature embedding. The authentication data are embedded in number of the coefficients of these sub-bands according to the adaptive threshold based on the watermark length and the coefficients of each DWT level. These sub-bands are used because they a

A novel design and implementation of a cognitive methodology for the on-line auto-tuning robust PID controller in a real heating system is presented in this paper. The aim of the proposed work is to construct a cognitive control methodology that gives optimal control signal to the heating system, which achieve the following objectives: fast and precise search efficiency in finding the on- line optimal PID controller parameters in order to find the optimal output temperature response for the heating system. The cognitive methodology (CM) consists of three engines: breeding engine based Routh-Hurwitz criterion stability, search engine based particle
swarm optimization (PSO) and aggregation knowledge engine based cultural algorithm (CA)