Fire is the most sever environmental condition affecting on concrete structures, thus investigating for fire safety in structural concrete is important for building construction. The slow heat transfer and strength loss enables concrete to be effective for fire resistance. Concrete structures withstand when exposed to fire according to: their thermal properties, rate of heating, characteristic properties of concrete mixes and their composition and on the duration of fire, and concerned as thermal property with other factors such as loss of mass which affected by aggregate type, moisture content, and composition of concrete mix. The present research goal is to study the effect of rising temperature on the compressive strength of the rea

In this work, metal oxides nanostructures, mainly, copper oxide (CuO), nickel oxide (NiO), titanium dioxide (TiO2), and multilayer structure were synthesized by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The structural purity and nanoparticle size of the prepared nanostructures were determined. The individual metal oxide samples (CuO, NiO and TiO2) showed high structural purity and minimum particle sizes of 34, 44, 61 nm, respectively. As well, the multilayer structure showed high structural purity as no elements or compounds other than the three oxides were founds in the final sample while the minimum particle size was 18 nm. This reduction in nanoparticle size can be considered as an advantage for the dc reactive magnetron sputtering tec

In this work, a novel design for the NiO/TiO2 heterojunction solar cells is presented. Highly-pure nanopowders prepared by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique were used to form the heterojunctions. The electrical characteristics of the proposed design were compared to those of a conventional thin film heterojunction design prepared by the same technique. A higher efficiency of 300% was achieved by the proposed design. This attempt can be considered as the first to fabricate solar cells from highly-pure nanopowders of two different semiconductors.

Gas compressibility factor or z-factor plays an important role in many engineering applications related to oil and gas exploration and production, such as gas production, gas metering, pipeline design, estimation of gas initially in place (GIIP), and ultimate recovery (UR) of gas from a reservoir. There are many z-factor correlations which are either derived from Equation of State or empirically based on certain observation through regression analysis. However, the results of the z-factor obtained from different correlations have high level of variance for the same gas sample under the same pressure and temperature. It is quite challenging to determine the most accurate correlation which provides accurate estimate for a range of pressures,

A low-cost reverse flow plasma system powered by argon gas pumping was built using homemade materials in this paper. The length of the resulting arc change was directly proportional to the flow rate, while using the thermal camera to examine the thermal intensity distribution and demonstrating that it is concentrated in the centre, away from the walls at various flow rates, the resulting arc's spectra were also measured. The results show that as the gas flow rate increased, so did the ambient temperature. The results show that the medium containing the arc has a maximum temperature of 34.1 ˚C at a flow rate of 14 L/min and a minimum temperature of 22.6 ˚C at a flow rate of 6 L/min.

A case–control study (80 patients with chronic hepatitis B virus [HBV] infection and 96 controls) was performed to evaluate the association of an IL12A gene variant (rs582537 A/C/G) with HBV infection. Allele G showed a signifcantly lower frequency in patients compared to controls (31.2 vs. 46.9%; probability [p]=0.009; corrected p [pc]=0.027) and was associated with a lower risk of HBV infection (odds ratio [OR]=0.49; 95% confdence interval [CI]=0.29–0.83). A similar lower risk was associated with genotypes CG (17.5 vs. 29.2; OR=0.25; 95% CI=0.08–0.81; p=0.02) and GG (10.0 vs. 16.7; OR=0.25; 95% CI=0.07–0.91; p=0.036), but the pc value was not signifcant (0.12 and 0.126, respec‑ tively). Serum IL35 levels showed signifcant difere

     In this work, the surface of the telescope’s mirror is cleaned using an atmospheric-pressure radio frequency plasma jet (APRFPJ), which is generated by Argon gas between two coaxial metal electrodes. The RF power supply is set to 2 MHz frequencies with three different power levels: 20, 50, and 80 W. Carbon, that has adhered to the surface, can be effectively removed using the plasma cleaning technique, which also modifies any residual bonds. The cleaned surface was clearly distinguished using an optical emission spectroscopy (OES) technique and a water contact angle (WCA) analyzer for the activation property on their surfaces. The sample showed a super hydrophilic surface at an angle of 1° after 2.5 minutes of plasma tre

PMMA/TiO2 homogeneous thin films were deposited by using plasma jet system under normal atmospheric pressure and room temperature. PMMA/TiO2 nanocomposite thin film synthesized by plasma polymerization. Titanium oxide was mixed with Methyl Methacrylate Monomer (MMA) with specific weight ratios (1, 3 and 5 grams of TiO2 per 100 ml of MMA). Optical properties of PMMA/TiO2 nanocomposite thin films were characterized by UV-Visible absorption spectra using a double beam UV-Vis-NIR Spectrophotometer. The thin films surface morphological analysis is carried out by employing SEM. The structure analysis are achieved by X-ray diffraction. UV-Visible absorption spectra shows that the increasing the concentration of titanium oxide added to the polym

A Raman spectroscopy method was optimised to examine the chemical changes of aspirin tablets after interaction with helium temperatures. Several aspirin tablets were exposed to plasma-assisted desorption ionisation flame for different times (10, 30, 50, 60, 180 and 300s) and then analysed by Raman spectroscopy using optimal conditions. The changes in chemistry between exposed and fresh (without exposure to plasma) tablets were compared. The vibrational peaks of the aspirin molecule in the Raman spectrum were identified by checking the peak position. The results showed clear spectra with increases in intensity of vibrational peaks until 30s, whereas no spectra were measured for the exposed tablets to plasma flame after 50s. It can, the