Portland cement concrete is the most commonly used construction material in the world for decades. However, the searches in concrete technology are remaining growing to meet particular properties related to its strength, durability, and sustainability issue. Thus, several types of concrete have been developed to enhance concrete performance. Most of the modern concrete types have to contain supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) as a partial replacement of cement. These materials are either by-products of waste such as fly ash, slag, rice husk ash, and silica fume or from a geological resource like natural pozzolans and metakaolin (MK). Ideally, the utilization of SCMs will enhance the concrete performance, minimize

This article proposes a new strategy based on a hybrid method that combines the gravitational search algorithm (GSA) with the bat algorithm (BAT) to solve a single-objective optimization problem. It first runs GSA, followed by BAT as the second step. The proposed approach relies on a parameter between 0 and 1 to address the problem of falling into local research because the lack of a local search mechanism increases intensity search, whereas diversity remains high and easily falls into the local optimum. The improvement is equivalent to the speed of the original BAT. Access speed is increased for the best solution. All solutions in the population are updated before the end of the operation of the proposed algorithm. The diversification f

Background: Obesity tends to appear in modern societies and constitutes a significant public health problem with an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.

Objective: This study aims to determine the agreement between actual and perceived body image in the general population.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study design was conducted with a sample size of 300. The data were collected from eight major populated areas of Northern district of Karachi Sindh with a period of six months (10^th January 2020 to 21^st June 2020). The Figure rating questionnaire scale (FRS) was applied to collect the demographic data and perception about body weight. Body mass index (BMI) used for ass

Photonic crystal fiber interferometers are widely used for sensing applications. In this work, solid core-Photonic crystal fiber based on Mach-Zehnder modal interferometer for sensing refractive index was presented. The general structure of sensor applied by splicing short lengths of PCF in both sides with conventional single mode fiber (SMF-28). To apply modal interferometer theory; collapsing technique based on fusion splicing used to excite higher order modes (LP01 and LP11). Laser diode (1550 nm) has been used as a pump light source. Where a high sensitive optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) was used to monitor and record the transmitted. The experimental work shows that the interference spectrum of Photonic crystal fiber interferometer

A Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA 2) approach for solving the multi-objective Environmental / Economic Power Dispatch (EEPD) problem is presented in this paper. In the past fuel cost consumption minimization was the aim (a single objective function) of economic power dispatch problem. Since the clean air act amendments have been applied to reduce SO2 and NOX emissions from power plants, the utilities change their strategies in order to reduce pollution and atmospheric emission as well, adding emission minimization as other objective function made economic power dispatch (EPD) a multi-objective problem having conflicting objectives. SPEA2 is the improved version of SPEA with better fitness assignment, density estimation, an

This study employs wavelet transforms to address the issue of boundary effects. Additionally, it utilizes probit transform techniques, which are based on probit functions, to estimate the copula density function. This estimation is dependent on the empirical distribution function of the variables. The density is estimated within a transformed domain. Recent research indicates that the early implementations of this strategy may have been more efficient. Nevertheless, in this work, we implemented two novel methodologies utilizing probit transform and wavelet transform. We then proceeded to evaluate and contrast these methodologies using three specific criteria: root mean square error (RMSE), Akaike information criterion (AIC), and log

Professional learning societies (PLS) are a systematic method for improving teaching and learning performance through designing and building professional learning societies. This leads to overcoming a culture of isolation and fragmenting the work of educational supervisors. Many studies show that constructing and developing strong professional learning societies - focused on improving education, curriculum and evaluation will lead to increased cooperation and participation of educational supervisors and teachers, as well as increases the application of effective educational practices in the classroom.

The roles of the educational supervisor to ensure the best and optimal implementation and activation of professional learning soci

The present study aims to investigate the various request constructions used in Classical Arabic and Modern Arabic language by identifying the differences in their usage in these two different genres. Also, the study attempts to trace the cases of felicitous and infelicitous requests in the Arabic language. Methodologically, the current study employs a web-based corpus tool (Sketch Engine) to analyze different corpora: the first one is Classical Arabic, represented by King Saud University Corpus of Classical Arabic, while the second is The Arabic Web Corpus “arTenTen” representing Modern Arabic. To do so, the study relies on felicity conditions to qualitatively interpret the quantitative data, i.e., following a mixed mode method