Two dimensional meso-scale concrete modeling was used in finite element analysis of plain concrete beam subjected to bending. The plane stress 4-noded quadrilateral elements were utilized to model coarse aggregate, cement mortar. The effect of aggregate fraction distribution, and pores percent of the total area – resulting from air voids entrapped in concrete during placement on the behavior of plain concrete beam in flexural was detected. Aggregate size fractions were randomly distributed across the profile area of the beam. Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) was employed to treat the discontinuities problems result from double phases of concrete and cracking that faced during the finite element analysis of concrete beam. Crac

Abstract: Stars whose initial masses are between (0.89 - 8.0) M☉ go through an Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) phase at the end of their life. Which have been evolved from the main sequence phase through Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB). The calculations were done by adopted Synthetic Model showed the following results: 1- Mass loss on the AGB phase consists of two phases for period (P <500) days and for (P>500) days; 2- the mass loss rate exponentially increases with the pulsation periods; 3- The expansion velocity VAGB for our stars are calculated according to the three assumptions; 4- the terminal velocity depends on several factors likes metallicity and luminosity. The calculations indicated that a super wind phase (S.W) developed on the A

Banks represents financial institutions that influence the economy of any country and their evolution and development is the need to seek all states , communities, maintain and control a guarantee of the beneficiaries investors and to promote confidence, so the specialized organizations trying to set principles and rules must be adhered to and are Basel (II) of the necessary effects to be introduced and work on their application.  Banks exposed by various risks one of them operational risks that have multiple effects on the activity of the institution itself, as well as the national economy, so this study was to find out what those effects and to find solutions and appropriate proposals to avoid Iraqi banks from the effects of risk,

Apical periodontitis (AP) is the most prevalent chronic inflammatory disease of the teeth. Bone resorption dynamics in symptomatic and asymptomatic AP are still unrecognized. This study examined different inflammatory markers within gingival crevicular fluid, including matrix metalloproteinases 8 (MMP8), tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases 1 (TIMP1), receptor activator of nuclear factor κB (RANK), its ligand (RANKL), and osteoprotegerin (OPG), to be used in comparing symptomatic apical periodontitis (SAP) and asymptomatic apical periodontitis (AAP) versus healthy teeth. Subjects with SAP, AAP, and a control group were recruited and GCF samples were collected by Periopaper strips. Clinical and radiographical measures were used f

In this study, a traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) classification system is proposed using a convolutional neural network (CNN) technique with automatically learned features from electromyography (EMG) signals for a non-human primate (NHP) model. A comparison between the proposed classification system and a classical classification method (k-nearest neighbors, kNN) is also presented. Developing such an NHP model with a suitable assessment tool (i.e., classifier) is a crucial step in detecting the effect of TSCI using EMG, which is expected to be essential in the evaluation of the efficacy of new TSCI treatments. Intramuscular EMG data were collected from an agonist/antagonist tail muscle pair for the pre- and post-spinal cord lesi

Introduction The Hybrid Gamma Camera (HGC) is being developed to enhance the localisation of radiopharmaceutical uptake in targeted tissues during surgical procedures such as sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy. Purpose To assess the capability of the HGC, a lymph-node-contrast (LNC) phantom was constructed for an evaluative study simulating medical scenarios of varying radioactivity concentration and SLN size. Materials and methods The phantom was constructed using two methyl methacrylate PMMA plates (8 mm thick). The SLNs were simulated by drilling circular wells of diameters ranging between 10 mm and 2.5 mm (16 wells in total) in one plate. These simulated SLNs were placed underneath scattering material with thicknesses ranging between 5 mm