Two novel demountable shear connectors for precast steel-concrete composite bridges are presented. The connectors use high-strength steel bolts, which are fastened to the steel beam with the aid of a special locking configuration that prevents slip of bolts within their holes. Moreover, the connectors promote accelerated construction and overcome typical construction tolerances issues of precast structures. Most importantly, the connectors allow bridge disassembly, and therefore, can address different bridge deterioration scenarios with minimum disturbance to traffic flow, i.e. (1) precast deck panels can be rapidly uplifted and replaced; (2) connectors can be rapidly removed and replaced; and (3) steel beams can be replaced, while precast decks and shear connectors can be reused. A series of push-out tests and a beam test were conducted to assess the behavior of the connectors and quantify the effect of important parameters. The experimental results showed that shear resistance and slip capacity can reach 2.5 and 2.7 times respectively of those of welded shear studs along with superior stiffness and strength against slab uplift. Additionally, shear stiffness of M16 mm LNSC was equal to that of M19 mm welded studs. Identical tests reveal negligible scatter in the shear load – slip displacement behavior. Design equations are proposed to predict the shear resistance with minimum deviations.
In this paper, three approximate methods namely the Bernoulli, the Bernstein, and the shifted Legendre polynomials operational matrices are presented to solve two important nonlinear ordinary differential equations that appeared in engineering and applied science. The Riccati and the Darcy-Brinkman-Forchheimer moment equations are solved and the approximate solutions are obtained. The methods are summarized by converting the nonlinear differential equations into a nonlinear system of algebraic equations that is solved using Mathematica®12. The efficiency of these methods was investigated by calculating the root mean square error (RMS) and the maximum error remainder (𝑀𝐸𝑅n) and it was found that the accuracy increases with increasi
... Show MoreBackground: Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an inflammatory bowel disease restricted to the large intestine, characterized by superficial ulceration. It is a progressive and chronic disease requiring long-term treatment. Although its etiology remains unknown, it is suggested that environmental factors influence genetically susceptible individuals, leading to the onset of the disease. (C-X-C) ligand 9 is a chemokine that belongs to the CXC chemokine family, it plays a role in the differentiation of immune cells such as cytotoxic lymphocytes, natural killer T cells, and macrophages. Its interaction with its corresponding receptor CXCR3 which is expressed by a variety of cells such as effector T cells, CD8+ cytotoxic T cells, and macrophage
... Show MoreThe heat exchanger is a device used to transfer heat energy between two fluids, hot and cold. In this work, an output feedback adaptive sliding mode controller is designed to control the temperature of the outlet cold water for plate heat exchanger. The measurement of the outlet cold temperature is the only information required. Hence, a sliding mode differentiator was designed to estimate the time derivative of outlet hot water temperature, which it is needed for constructing a sliding variable. The discontinuous gain value of the sliding mode controller is adapted according to a certain adaptation law. Two constraints which imposed on the volumetric flow rate of outlet cold (control input) were considered within the rules of the proposed
... Show MoreCalculating the Inverse Kinematic (IK) equations is a complex problem due to the nonlinearity of these equations. Choosing the end effector orientation affects the reach of the target location. The Forward Kinematics (FK) of Humanoid Robotic Legs (HRL) is determined by using DenavitHartenberg (DH) method. The HRL has two legs with five Degrees of Freedom (DoF) each. The paper proposes using a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to optimize the best orientation angle of the end effector of HRL. The selected orientation angle is used to solve the IK equations to reach the target location with minimum error. The performance of the proposed method is measured by six scenarios with different simulated positions of the legs. The proposed
... Show MoreThis research aims to suggest formulas to estimate carry-over effects with two-period change-over design, and then, all other effects in the analysis of variance of this design, and find the efficiency of the two-period change-over design relative to another design (say, completely randomized design).
Adverse drug reactions (ADR) are important information for verifying the view of the patient on a particular drug. Regular user comments and reviews have been considered during the data collection process to extract ADR mentions, when the user reported a side effect after taking a specific medication. In the literature, most researchers focused on machine learning techniques to detect ADR. These methods train the classification model using annotated medical review data. Yet, there are still many challenging issues that face ADR extraction, especially the accuracy of detection. The main aim of this study is to propose LSA with ANN classifiers for ADR detection. The findings show the effectiveness of utilizing LSA with ANN in extracting AD
... Show More<p>Combating the COVID-19 epidemic has emerged as one of the most promising healthcare the world's challenges have ever seen. COVID-19 cases must be accurately and quickly diagnosed to receive proper medical treatment and limit the pandemic. Imaging approaches for chest radiography have been proven in order to be more successful in detecting coronavirus than the (RT-PCR) approach. Transfer knowledge is more suited to categorize patterns in medical pictures since the number of available medical images is limited. This paper illustrates a convolutional neural network (CNN) and recurrent neural network (RNN) hybrid architecture for the diagnosis of COVID-19 from chest X-rays. The deep transfer methods used were VGG19, DenseNet121
... Show MoreComputer-aided diagnosis (CAD) has proved to be an effective and accurate method for diagnostic prediction over the years. This article focuses on the development of an automated CAD system with the intent to perform diagnosis as accurately as possible. Deep learning methods have been able to produce impressive results on medical image datasets. This study employs deep learning methods in conjunction with meta-heuristic algorithms and supervised machine-learning algorithms to perform an accurate diagnosis. Pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) or auto-encoder are used for feature extraction, whereas feature selection is performed using an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm. Ant colony optimization helps to search for the bes
... Show MoreNotwithstanding the importance of international cooperation as the other facet of international interactions, a strategy of conflict resolution, a maintainer of international peace and security, its provision in the United Nations conventions, as an objective of the United Nations after the international peace and security, however, the recognition of international cooperation has not been underlined by global, intellectual think tanks. While realism emphasized on the state's role in achieving international cooperation to ensure mutual and multilateral interests, liberalism focused on the role of international organizations in building such cooperation. Additionally, constructivist approaches developed other sub-variables to contribute to t
... Show More