The conception and experimental assessment of a removable friction-based shear connector (FBSC) for precast steel-concrete composite bridges is presented. The FBSC uses pre-tensioned high-strength steel bolts that pass through countersunk holes drilled on the top flange of the steel beam. Pre-tensioning of the bolts provides the FBSC with significant frictional resistance that essentially prevents relative slip displacement of the concrete slab with respect to the steel beam under service loading. The countersunk holes are grouted to prevent sudden slip of the FBSC when friction resistance is exceeded. Moreover, the FBSC promotes accelerated bridge construction by fully exploiting prefabrication, does not raise issues relevant to precast co

Lignin has emerged as a promising asphalt binder modifier due to its sustainable and renewable nature, with the potential to improve flexible pavement performance. This study investigates the use of Soda Lignin Powder (SLP), derived from Pinus wood sawdust via alkaline treatment, as an asphalt modifier to enhance mixture durability. SLP was characterized using Fourier Transformation Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), and Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis (SEM/EDX), revealing significant changes in its chemical structure post-extraction. These analyses showed the presence of phenolic units, including hydroxyphenyl propane, syringyl, and guaiacyl units. The morphology of SLP was identified

The intelligent buildings provided various incentives to get highly inefficient energy-saving caused by the non-stationary building environments. In the presence of such dynamic excitation with higher levels of nonlinearity and coupling effect of temperature and humidity, the HVAC system transitions from underdamped to overdamped indoor conditions. This led to the promotion of highly inefficient energy use and fluctuating indoor thermal comfort. To address these concerns, this study develops a novel framework based on deep clustering of lagrangian trajectories for multi-task learning (DCLTML) and adding a pre-cooling coil in the air handling unit (AHU) to alleviate a coupling issue. The proposed DCLTML exhibits great overall control and is

Background: The need of the patient for a more reasonable esthetic orthodontic intervention has risen nowadays. Thus, orthodontists make use of esthetic orthodontic materials like brackets, ligature elastics, and arch wires. The esthetic brackets come as different forms of materials, such as ceramic brackets, which have their stainability remaining as the most important consideration for the patients and the orthodontists. This study aimed to compare the staining effects of various staining materials, including black tea, cigarette smoke and Pepsi, as well as the time effect on the color stability of sapphire ceramic brackets bonded with three kinds of light cure orthodontic adhesives: Transbond, Resilience and Enlight. Materials and Met

Cloud Computing is a mass platform to serve high volume data from multi-devices and numerous technologies. Cloud tenants have a high demand to access their data faster without any disruptions. Therefore, cloud providers are struggling to ensure every individual data is secured and always accessible. Hence, an appropriate replication strategy capable of selecting essential data is required in cloud replication environments as the solution. This paper proposed a Crucial File Selection Strategy (CFSS) to address poor response time in a cloud replication environment. A cloud simulator called CloudSim is used to conduct the necessary experiments, and results are presented to evidence the enhancement on replication performance. The obtained an

Radiation measuring devices need to periodic calibration process to examine their sensitivity and the extent of the response. This study is used to evaluate the radiation doses of the workers in the laboratories of the Directorate of Safety as a result of the use of point sources in calibrating of the devices in two ways, the first is the direct measurement by the FAG device and the others using RESRAD and RAD PRO programs. The total doses values using FAG were (2.57 μSv/y, 102.3 μSv/y and 20.75 μSv/y for TLD laboratory, Gamma spectroscopy analyses (GSA) laboratory and equipment store respectively, and the total doses that calculated using RESRAD and RAD PRO were 1.518 μSv/y, 76.65 μSv/y and 21.2 μSv/y for the above laboratories. t

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the possible the association between +3061 (G>A, rs1143676) missense mutation in exon 24 of the integrin α-4 subunit (ITGA-4) gene and the response to natalizumab in a sample of Iraqi multiple sclerosis patients. Methods: A sample of 59 patients with multiple sclerosis (16 males and 43 females; mean age of 32 years; age range of 15 to 52 years) receiving natalizumab for at least 12 consecutive months were involved in the study between March and August/ 2022. The sample was categorized into two groups according to their response to natalizumab treatment (responders and non-responders). Polymerase chain reaction and Sanger’s sequencing for the extracted deoxyribonucleic acid was pe

To achieve optimal plant growth and production under salt stress, some products were added in adequate quantities to give a good yield, especially bean plants which are sensitive to salinity. For this purpose, this experiment was carried out during the spring growing season in 2022 in Baghdad, to study the effects of humic acid, cytokinin, arginine and their interaction with 9 parameters that reflect the overall traits of vegetative growth and yield of common bean plants Phaseolus vulgaris L. var. Astraid (from MONARCH seeds, China). The factorial design with 3 replicates was used, each with 7 plants treated via foliar spraying or by addition to the soil. The first factor included three groups; H0, H1 and H2 (0, 6, 12 Kg.h^-1 H

The present research aimed to study the polymorphisms of the chicken insulin-like growth factor 2 (IGF2) in two commercial broiler breeds (Cobb 500 and Hubbard F-15). In total, 300 avian blood samples were obtained. The genomic DNA was isolated using a fast salt-extraction technique. Moreover, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to amplify 1146 bp fragments of the gene. The amplified fragments were subjected to restriction enzyme digestion using the HinfI endonuclease enzyme, and the digested products were separated on a 2% agarose gel. The findings indicated that there were two alleles, T and C, for the target locus, with frequencies of 73.3% and 26.7%, respectively. Three distinct genotype variations, TT, TC, and CC, were found, with