Objective. This study aimed to evaluate the orthodontic bond strength and enamel-preserving ability of a hydroxyapatite nanoparticles-containingself-etch system following exposure to various ageing methods. Materials and Methods. Hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (nHAp) were incorporated into an orthodontic self-etch primer (SEP, Transbond™ plus) in three different concentrations (5%, 7%, and 9% wt) and tested versus the plain SEP (control) for shear bond strength (SBS), adhesive remnant index (ARI) scores, and enamel damage in range-finding experiments using premolar teeth. The best-performing formulation was further exposed to the following four artificial ageing methods: initial debonding, 24 h water storage, one-month water storage, and one-month acid challenge. A field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) was used to examine the integrity of debonded enamel surfaces and calcium-phosphates (CaPs) reprecipitation. Results. The best-performing formulation (7% nHAp-SEP) resulted in significantly lower SBS (
A fixed firefighting system is a key component of fire safeguarding and reducing fire danger. It is installed as a permanent component in a structure to protect the entire or a portion of the building and its contents. The study aims to review the previous studies that deal with the evaluation of fire safety measures and their use in resolving problems associated with fire threats in buildings. For this reason, a number of previous studies in this field were reviewed compared with the NFPA code. The findings revealed that regulatory developments over the last several decades had created an atmosphere conducive to innovation. This has resulted in a growth in the number of fixed firefighting system types now obtainable. Th
... Show MoreThis study aims to assess the effect of adding twisted fins in a triple-tube heat exchanger used for latent heat storage compared with using straight fins and no fins. In the proposed heat exchanger, phase change material (PCM) is placed between the middle annulus while hot water is passed in the inner tube and outer annulus in a counter-current direction, as a superior method to melt the PCM and store the thermal energy. The behavior of the system was assessed regarding the liquid fraction and temperature distributions as well as charging time and energy storage rate. The results indicate the advantages of adding twisted fins compared with those of using straight fins. The effect of several twisted fins was also studied to discover
... Show MoreObjectives: Small field of view gamma detection and imaging technologies for monitoring in vivo tracer uptake are rapidly expanding and being introduced for bed-side imaging and image guided surgical procedures. The Hybrid Gamma Camera (HGC) has been developed to enhance the localization of targeted radiopharmaceuticals during surgical procedures; for example in sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsies and for bed-side imaging in procedures such as lacrimal drainage imaging and thyroid scanning. In this study, a prototype anthropomorphic head and neck phantom has been designed, constructed, and evaluated using representative modelled medical scenarios to study the capability of the HGC to detect SLNs and image small organs. Methods: An anthropom
... Show MoreA novel demountable shear connector for precast steel‐concrete composite bridges is presented. The connector uses high‐strength steel bolts, which are fastened to the top flange of the steel beam with the aid of a special locking nut configuration that prevents slip of bolts within their holes. Moreover, the connector promotes accelerated construction and overcomes typical construction tolerances issues of precast structures. Most importantly, the connector allows bridge disassembly, and therefore, can address different bridge deterioration scenarios with minimum disturbance to traffic flow, i.e. (i) precast deck panels can be rapidly uplifted and replaced; (ii) connectors can be rapidly removed and replaced; and (iii) steel beams can b
... Show MoreStenography is the art of hiding the very presence of communication by embedding secret message into innocuous looking cover document, such as digital image, videos, sound files, and other computer files that contain perceptually irrelevant or redundant information as covers or carriers to hide secret messages.
In this paper, a new Least Significant Bit (LSB) nonsequential embedding technique in wave audio files is introduced. To support the immunity of proposed hiding system, and in order to recover some weak aspect inherent with the pure implementation of stego-systems, some auxiliary processes were suggested and investigated including the use of hidden text jumping process and stream ciphering algorithm. Besides, the suggested
... Show MoreThe primary objective of this paper is to improve a biometric authentication and classification model using the ear as a distinct part of the face since it is unchanged with time and unaffected by facial expressions. The proposed model is a new scenario for enhancing ear recognition accuracy via modifying the AdaBoost algorithm to optimize adaptive learning. To overcome the limitation of image illumination, occlusion, and problems of image registration, the Scale-invariant feature transform technique was used to extract features. Various consecutive phases were used to improve classification accuracy. These phases are image acquisition, preprocessing, filtering, smoothing, and feature extraction. To assess the proposed
... Show MoreThis study proposed a biometric-based digital signature scheme proposed for facial recognition. The scheme is designed and built to verify the person’s identity during a registration process and retrieve their public and private keys stored in the database. The RSA algorithm has been used as asymmetric encryption method to encrypt hashes generated for digital documents. It uses the hash function (SHA-256) to generate digital signatures. In this study, local binary patterns histograms (LBPH) were used for facial recognition. The facial recognition method was evaluated on ORL faces retrieved from the database of Cambridge University. From the analysis, the LBPH algorithm achieved 97.5% accuracy; the real-time testing was done on thirty subj
... Show MoreWith wireless sensor network (WSN) wide applications in popularity, securing its data becomes a requirement. This can be accomplished by encrypting sensor node data. In this paper a new an efficient symmetric cryptographic algorithm is presented. This algorithm is called wireless sensor network wavelet curve ciphering system (WSN-WCCS). The algorithm idea based on discrete wavelet transformation to generate keys for each node in WSN. It implements on hierarchical clustering WSN using LEACH protocol. Python programming language version 2.7 was used to create the simulator of WSN framework and implement a WSN-WCCS algorithm. The simulation result of the proposed WSN-WCCS with other symmetric algorithms has show
... Show MoreThe study aimed to identify the effect of the ethical perception of a sample of managers in public organizations on responsible behavior in light of the rapid changes taking place in the external environment. To achieve this, the researcher followed the descriptive analytical approach by applying a questionnaire of two parts. The first part dealt with the ethical perception according to the scale of Johnson (2015), which consisted of (22) items. The second part dealt with measuring responsible behavior, which consisted of (20) items based on the scale of Development of Ethical Behavior (Narvaez, 2006) for a sample of (125) respondents randomly chosen. The results showed that the estimation degree of managers in public governmental o
... Show MoreAssimilation is defined ,by many phoneticians like Schane ,Roach ,and many others, as a phonological process when there is a change of one sound into another because of neighboring sounds.This study investigates the phoneme assimilation as a phonological process in English and Arabic and it is concerned specifically with the differences and similarities in both languages. Actually ,this study reflects the different terms which are used in Arabic to refer to this phenomenon and in this way it shows whether the term 'assimilation ' can have the same meaning of 'idgham' in Arabic or not . Besides, in Arabic , this phenomenon is discussed from&nb
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