Interest has largely centered on the use of plant fibers to reinforce plastics, because these fibers are abundant and cheap. Carrot fibers (Curran) have been extracted from carrot, left over from carrot juice manufacture. The fibers of two sizes fine (50<µm) and coarse (100-150 µm) have been mixed with epoxy in four levels of loading (10, 20, 30, 40 wt %) respectively. Impact test, shore d hardness test and three point bending test of epoxy and carrot fiber-epoxy composites samples have been determined. The impact strength values of samples prepared with fine and coarse fibers increased as compared with pure epoxy sample. Hardness values increased, and the Young’s modulus values decreased with fiber content of both sizes.

Shallow foundations have been commonly used to transfer load to soil layer within the permissible limits of settlement based on the bearing capacity of the soil. For most practical cases, the shape of the shallow foundation is of slight significance. Also, friction resistance forces in the first layers of soils are negligible due to non-sufficient surrounding surface area and compaction conditions. However, the bearing capacity of a shallow foundation can be increased by several techniques. Geocell is one of the geosynthetic tool applied mainly to reinforce soil. This study presents a numerical approach of honeycombed geocell steel panels reinforcing the sandy soil under shallow foundation, and several parameters are investigated such as th

he genus Hirudo is an invertebrate animal that got major concerns to human. However, genetics of Hirudo has been unwell considered in Iraq. In order to gain a deeper understanding in the outline of the genetic of Hirudo that were used in alternative medicine clinics, nineteen specimens of Hirudo were obtained. Fourteen of them (H.verbana, n=10; H. orientalis, n=4) were obtained from some different clinics and scientific centres in Baghdad, Iraq between January and March 2022, these specimens were considered as non-local leeches. The other (native isolates) leeches (H. orientalis, n=5) were collected in 2014 from two localities in Erbil, northern Iraq. ITS-2, COI and 12S-rRNA of Hirudo spp were amplified using conventional polymerase chain r

Crystalline In2O3 Thin films have been prepared by flash evaporation. We have studied the crystal structure of as deposited at 303K and annealed at 523K using X-ray diffraction. The Hall Effect measurements confirmed that electrons were predominant charges in the conduction process (i.e n-type).It is found that the absorption coefficient of the prepared films decreases with increasing Ta. The d.c conductivity study showed that the conductivity increase with increasing Ta , whereas the activation energy decreases with increasing Ta. Also we study the barrier tunneling diode for In2O3/Si heterostructure grown by Flash evaporation technique. (capacitance-voltage C-V) spectroscopy measurements were performed at 303 K and at the annealing temper

Most heuristic search method's performances are dependent on parameter choices. These parameter settings govern how new candidate solutions are generated and then applied by the algorithm. They essentially play a key role in determining the quality of the solution obtained and the efficiency of the search. Their fine-tuning techniques are still an on-going research area. Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm is a very powerful optimization method and has become popular in many fields. Based on the prolonged research work on DE, it is now arguably one of the most outstanding stochastic optimization algorithms for real-parameter optimization. One reason for its popularity is its widely appreciated property of having only a small number of par

During the last decade, there has been a concern about the relation between aluminum residuals in treated water and Alzheimer disease, and more interest has been considered on the development of natural coagulants. The present study aimed to investigate the efficiency of alum as a primary coagulant in conjunction with mallow, Arabic gum and okra as coagulant aids for the treatment of water samples containing synthetic turbidity of kaolin. Jar test experiments were carried out for initial raw water turbidities 100, 200 and 500 (NTU). The optimum doses of alum, mallow, Arabic gum and okra were 20, 2, 1 and 1 mg/L for100 NTU turbidity level, 35, 4, 2 and 3 mg/L , for 200NTU turbidity level and 50, 8, 10 and 8 mg/L for 500 NTU turbidity leve