This paper reports an evaluation of the properties of medium-quality concrete incorporating recycled coarse aggregate (RCA). Concrete specimens were prepared with various percentages of the RCA (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). The workability, mechanical properties, and durability in terms of abrasion of cured concrete were examined at different ages. The results reveal insignificant differences between the recycled concrete (RC) and reference concrete in terms of the mechanical and durability-related measurements. Meanwhile, the workability of the RC reduced vastly since the replacement of the RCA reached 75% and 100%. The ultrasound pulse velocity (UPV) results greatly depend on the porosity of concrete and the RC exhibited higher poros

Stealth marketing is considered as one of the contemporary issues that researchers have begun to explore as a current understanding. It is the marketing approach used by organizations to promote their products and services to the public in implicit and indirect manner. In this article, the concept of stealth marketing will be discussed throw its advantages and disadvantages. In addition, the different techniques of stealth marketing have been discussed including: viral marketing, celebrity marketing, brand pushers, bait-and-tease marketing, video games marketing, and marketing in music. Furthermore, a new technique of marketing entitled “Marketing through social responsibility” has been added and discussed according to the themes in the

This study investigated the structural behavior of a beam–slab member fabricated using a steel C-Purlins beam carrying a profile steel sheet slab covered by a dry board sheet filled with recycled aggregate concrete, called a CBPDS member. This concept was developed to reduce the cost and self-weight of the composite beam–slab system; it replaces the hot-rolled steel I-beam with a steel C-Purlins section, which is easier to fabricate and weighs less. For this purpose, six full-scale CBPDS specimens were tested under four-point static bending. This study investigated the effect of using double C-Purlins beams face-to-face as connected or separated sections and the effect of using concrete material that contains different recycled

Hypothyroidism has been associated with disorders of glucose and insulin metabolism..The present study was designed to evaluate the possible change in some hormones (free testosterone, estradiol, prolactin, insulin), glucose and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) in women with primary hypothyroidism under thyroid hormone replacement therapy .This cross-sectional study was carried on 62 hypothyroid patients׳  women and 22  healthy women as control group at the specialized center for endocrinology and diabetes, AL-Rasafa Directorate of  Health Baghdad, with age range(15-60 years), diagnosed as having primary hypothyroidism on thyroxine replacement therapy with duration not less than four months.

Osteoporosis is a systemic disease of the skeleton, characterized by low bone mass and alteration in the micro-architecture of the bone tissue that lead to an increase in brittleness with the ensuing predisposition to bone fracture. Global statistics shows that women are more exposed to this disease than men and in particular at menopause. This study was designed to evaluate the use of some bone markers: serum osteocalcin (Ost), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), as bone formation markers, also parathyroid hormone (PTH), calcium and inorganic phosphate level, for the assessment of patients with osteoporosis and to evaluate their role in monitoring of several types of therapeutic interventions (such as bisphosphonates, hormonal replacement thera

Background: Acute leukemias (ALs) are a heterogeneous group of malignancies with various clinical, morphological, immunophenotypic, and molecular characteristics. Distinguishing between lymphoid and myeloid leukemia is often performed by flow cytometry. This study aimed to evaluate the immunophenotypic characterization and expression of immuno-markers in both acute myeloid leukemia (AML-M0) and acute T-cell lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL).

Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted in the Pathology Department/Teaching Laboratories/Medical City/Iraq and included all patients newly diagnosed with AL from 5 January to 10 December 2018. Immunophenotypic analysis wa

Multi-agent systems are subfield of Artificial Intelligence that has experienced rapid growth because of its flexibility and intelligence in order to solve distributed problems. Multi-agent systems (MAS) have got interest from various researchers in different disciplines for solving sophisticated problems by dividing them into smaller tasks. These tasks can be assigned to agents as autonomous entities with their private database, which act on their environment, perceive, process, retain and recall by using multiple inputs. MAS can be defined as a network of individual agents that share knowledge and communicate with each other in order to solve a problem that is beyond the scope of a single agent. It is imperative to understand the chara

This paper discusses the limitation of both Sequence Covering Array (SCA) and Covering Array (CA) for testing reactive system when the order of parameter-values is sensitive. In doing so, this paper proposes a new model to take the sequence values into consideration. Accordingly, by superimposing the CA onto SCA yields another type of combinatorial test suite termed Multi-Valued Sequence Covering Array (MVSCA) in a more generalized form. This superimposing is a challenging process due to NP-Hardness for both SCA and CA. Motivated by such a challenge, this paper presents the MVSCA with a working illustrative example to show the similarities and differences among combinatorial testing methods. Consequently, the MVSCA is a