This paper analyzes a piled-raft foundation on non-homogeneous soils with variable layer depth percentages. The present work aims to perform a three-dimensional finite element analysis of a piled-raft foundation subjected to vertical load using the PLAXIS 3D software. Parametric analysis was carried out to determine the effect of soil type and initial layer thickness. The parametric study showed that increasing the relative density from 30 % to 80 % of the upper sand layer and the thickness of the first layer has led to an increase in the ultimate load and a decrease in the settlement of piled raft foundations for the cases of sand over weak soil.  In clay over weak soil, the ultimate load of the piled raft foundation w

Background: It's believed that HBD-3 is involved in the tissue remodeling process of articular cartilage. Also, HBD-3 has anti-inflammatory properties. Objectives: The purpose of this study is to assay human beta-defensine-3 (HBD-3) in serum from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients and investigate its correlation with proinflammatory cytokines. Methods: In this case-control study, fifty-eight RA patients were aged 20–65 years, and 29 age-matched healthy subjects (HS) had no inflammatory rheumatic diseases. The disease activity score-28 joint erythrocyte sedimentation rate (DAS28-ESR) was used to measure RA activity. CRP, ACPA, HBD-3, TNF-α, and IL-1β were assessed using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay technique (ELISA). Res

The objective of this study was to develop neural network algorithm, (Multilayer Perceptron), based correlations for the prediction overall volumetric mass-transfer coefficient (k_La), in slurry bubble column for gas-liquid-solid systems. The Multilayer Perceptron is a novel technique based on the feature generation approach using back propagation neural network. Measurements of overall volumetric mass transfer coefficient were made with the air - Water, air - Glycerin and air - Alcohol systems as the liquid phase in bubble column of 0.15 m diameter. For operation with gas velocity in the range 0-20 cm/sec, the overall volumetric mass transfer coefficient was found to decrease w

Spent catalysts for sulfuric acid production have large amount of vanadium and due to environmental authority it is required to reduce the vanadium contain of the spent catalyst. Experimental investigation was conducted to study the vanadium recovery from spent catalyst via leaching process using sodium hydroxide to study the effect of process variables (temperatures, sodium hydroxide molarities, leaching time and particle size) on vanadium recovery. The effect of process variables (temperature, particle size,molarities of sodium hydroxide and leaching time) on the percentages of vanadium recovery were investigated and discussed .It was found that the percentage of vanadium recovery increased with increasing temperature up to 100 , incre

n this study, 25 clinical isolates of Proteus spp. were collected from urine, wounds and burns specimens from different hospitals in Baghdad city, all isolates were identified by using different bacteriological media, biochemical assays and Vitek-2 system. It was found that 15 (60%) isolates were identifies as Proteus mirabilis and 10 (40 %) isolates were Proteus vulgaris. The susceptibility of P. mirabilis and P. vulgaris isolates towards cefotaxime was (66.6 %) and (44.4 %) respectively; while the susceptibility of P. mirabilis and P. vulgaris isolates towards ceftazidime was (20%). Extended spectrum β-lactamses producing Proteus was (30.7 %). DNA of 10 isolates of P. mirabilis and 4 isolates of P. vulgaris were extracted and de

The research aims to identify the degree of the availability of knowledge, skill and ability as components of human capital, in addition to stand at the level of strategic agility upon tourism and travel agencies company of Jordan, the impact of human capital on strategic agility has been tested through distribution of a questionnaire on a Randomly Sample from Workers in Jordan tourist Companies of (349),a number of statistics techinces have been used simple liner Regrision and Multiplayer regession, it has shown that the degree of knowledge, ability and skill availability was high, and the same applies on strategic agility components, and shown out that there is a statistically significant impact between human capital and strate

Background: The study aimed to investigate the effect of different techniques of en masse retraction on the vertical and sagittal position, axial inclination, rate of space closure, and type of movement of maxillary central incisor. Materials and methods: A typodont simulation system was used (CL II division 2 malocclusion). Three groups were used group 1(N=10, T-loop), group 2(N=10, Time-Saving loop), and group 3(N=10, Microimplant). Photographs were taken before and after retraction and measurements were made using Autodesk AutoCAD© software 2010. Kruskal-Wallis one-way analyses of variance and Mann-Whitney U test (p?0.05) were used. Results: The rate of space closure showed no significant difference among the three groups (p?0.05), whi