Alongside the development of high-speed rail, rail flaw detection is of great importance to ensure railway safety, especially for improving the speed and load of the train. Several conventional inspection methods such as visual, acoustic, and electromagnetic inspection have been introduced in the past. However, these methods have several challenges in terms of detection speed and accuracy. Combined inspection methods have emerged as a promising approach to overcome these limitations. Nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques in conjunction with artificial intelligence approaches have tremendous potential and viability because it is highly possible to improve the detection accuracy which has been proven in various conventional nondestr

This paper proposes a novel meta-heuristic optimization algorithm called the fine-tuning meta-heuristic algorithm (FTMA) for solving global optimization problems. In this algorithm, the solutions are fine-tuned using the fundamental steps in meta-heuristic optimization, namely, exploration, exploitation, and randomization, in such a way that if one step improves the solution, then it is unnecessary to execute the remaining steps. The performance of the proposed FTMA has been compared with that of five other optimization algorithms over ten benchmark test functions. Nine of them are well-known and already exist in the literature, while the tenth one is proposed by the authors and introduced in this article. One test trial was shown t

Huge yearly investments were made by organizations for the development and maintenance. However, it has been reported that most of the IT projects fails as it is delayed, over budget and discontinued quality. A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for the IT projects. Nine (9) CSFs was identified from the SLR. An online survey was conducted among 103 respondents from developers and IT managers. The data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 22). The findings showed that the highest CSFs of IT projects is commitment and motivation. Project monitoring was found the lowest score ranked by respondents.

     In the last few years, the literature conferred a great interest in studying the feasibility of using memristive devices for computing. Memristive devices are important in structure, dynamics, as well as functionalities of artificial neural networks (ANNs) because of their resemblance to biological learning in synapses and neurons regarding switching characteristics of their resistance. Memristive architecture consists of a number of metastable switches (MSSs). Although the literature covered a variety of memristive applications for general purpose computations, the effect of low or high conductance of each MSS was unclear. This paper focuses on finding a potential criterion to calculate the conductance of each MMS rather t

This study was conducted to determine the effect of vitamin A ( 10 mg/kg ) on avearage testis weight and sexual glands ( Prostate and Seminal Vesicle ) for albino male mice treated with Hexavalent chromium ( 1000 ppm ) .The current study 40 mice were divided into fife groups : 1st group treated with distilled water and considered an control group (C) / the 2nd group treated with sesame oil ( T1) / 3rd group was givin hexavalent chromium ( 1000 ppm ) (T2) / 4th group treated with vitamin A ( 10 mg / kg ) and exposed to hexavalent chromium ( 1000 ppm ) (T3) / 5th group treated with vitamin A ( 10 mg kg ) (T4) . The expermint lasted 35 day . the results showed a significant ( P ? 0.05 ) decrease in avearage testis weight and sexual glan

Pseudomonas aeruginosa readily binds to different kind of abiotic surfaces and form biofilm. The ability of the bacterial species to form biofilm onto polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is associated with several economic, health and environmental problems. The effect of kind of water on ability of this bacterium to form biofilm is scanty in literature. In present study, the ability of different environmental isolates of P. aeruginosa to form biofilm onto polystyrene microtiter plate was evaluated. Furthermore, the effect of waters that collected from different sources on biofilm formation of this bacterium onto PVC was studied. Spectrophotometric method was used to check the ability of bacteria to form biofilm and evaluated the role of waters onto a