In Australia, most of the existing buildings were designed before the release of the Australian standard for earthquake actions in 2007. Therefore, many existing buildings in Australia lack adequate seismic design, and their seismic performance must be assessed. The recent earthquake that struck Mansfield, Victoria near Melbourne elevated the need to produce fragility curves for existing reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Australia. Fragility curves are frequently utilized to assess buildings’ seismic performance and it is defined as the demand probability surpassing capacity at a given intensity level. Numerous factors can influence the results of the fragility assessment of RC buildings. Among the most important factors that can affe

Near surface mounted (NSM) carbon fibers reinforced polymer (CFRP) reinforcement is one of the techniques for reinforcing masonry structures and is considered to provide significant advantages. This paper is composed of two parts. The first part presents the experimental study of brick masonry walls reinforced with NSM CFRP strips under combined shear-compression loads. Masonry walls have been tested under vertical compression, with different bed joint orientations 90° and 45° relative to the loading direction. Different reinforcement orientations were used including vertical, horizontal, and a combination of both sides of the wall. The second part of this paper comprises a numerical analysis of unreinforced brick masonry (URM) wa

The activation and reaction energies of the C-C and C-H bonds cleavage in pyrene molecule are calculated applying the Density Functional Theory and 6-311G Gaussian basis. Different values for the energies result for the different bonds, depending on the location of the bond and the structure of the corresponding transition states. The C-C bond cleavage reactions include H atom migration, in many cases, leading to the formation of CH2 groups and H-C≡C- acetylenic fragments. The activation energy values of the C-C reactions are greater than 190.00 kcal/mol for all bonds, those for the C-H bonds are greater than 160.00 kcal/mol. The reaction energy values for the C-C bonds range between 56.497 to 191.503 kcal/mol. As for the C-H cleavage rea

Elzaki Transform Adomian decomposition technique (ETADM), which an elegant combine, has been employed in this work to solve non-linear Riccati matrix differential equations. Solutions are presented to demonstrate the relevance of the current approach. With the use of figures, the results of the proposed strategy are displayed and evaluated. It is demonstrated that the suggested approach is effective, dependable, and simple to apply to a range of related scientific and technical problems.

In this paper, a miniaturized 2 × 2 electro-optic plasmonic Mach– Zehnder switch (MZS) based on metal–polymer–silicon hybrid waveguide is presented. Adiabatic tapers are designed to couple the light between the plasmonic phase shifter, implemented in each of the MZS arms, and the 3-dB input/output directional couplers. For 6 µm-long hybrid plasmonic waveguide supported by JRD1 polymer (r33= 390 pm/V), a π-phase shift voltage of 2 V is obtained. The switch is designed for 1550 nm operation wavelength using COMSOL software and characterizes by 2.3 dB insertion loss, 9.9 fJ/bit power consumption, and 640 GHz operation bandwidth

This work is the first study of the Curculionoidea fauna from Kurdistan region of Iraq, based on the intensive survey in different localities of Kurdistan from March 2016 to November 2017. In total, 41 species belonging to 28 genera, 21 tribes and 3 families were collected and identified, including 25 species newly recorded for the Iraqi fauna.

General distribution, collecting localities and methods, with plant association data for each species are given.

Background: Health professionals have a crucial role in promotion, support and management of breastfeeding. To be effective in this effort, the clinician should focus on the issue from the preconception stage through pregnancy and delivery, and continue in subsequent infant care. Aim of the study: to assess the effectiveness of the UNICEF/WHO 40-hour of breast feeding training through the assess breastfeeding knowledge and attitudes of the health profession staff before and after training course.