Resilient polymeric materials such as silicone elastomers are currently used for maxillofacial prostheses construction but the strength of these materials and their clinical performance need to be optimized with the addition of reinforcing fillers. This study investigates the effect of zirconia nanopowder addition on tear strength, tensile strength, elongation at break, Shore A hardness, surface roughness and cytotoxicity of VST-50 maxillofacial silicone. Silicone base was mixed with different amounts (1%, 2% and 3%) of zirconia nanopowder using a vacuum mixer. Silicone without filler was used as control for comparison. Scanning Electron Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy were utilized to assess the efficiency of high-shear vacuum mixing as filler dispersion method and the surface topography, respectively. Both SEM and AFM images showed that the zirconia nanopowder were distributed fairly well within the polymer. Statistically, highly significant increase in tear strength, tensile strength and hardness with non-significant decrease in elongation at break and non-significant increase in surface roughness were seen with 1% and 2% groups. Whereas with 3% group, there was significant improvement in tear strength, tensile strength and hardness but there was significant undesirable decrease in elongation and increase in roughness. Cytotoxicity test revealed that the addition of zirconia nanopowder was nontoxic to Rat Embryonic Fibroblast (REF) cells and there was non-significant change in the cell viability of all study groups after 24- and 72-hours incubation periods. In conclusion, the addition of 2% by weight nano zirconia to VST-50 maxillofacial silicone could be beneficial in enhancing its performance.
Background: The surface properties of the titanium alloy plays a significant role in the bond of the dental implant with living bone and modification of the implant surface could enhance osseointegration. This study was aimed to investigate the effect of different durations of heat treatment on the surface properties of titanium alloy for dental implants. Materials and methods: Twenty disks of (Ti-6Al-4V) alloy were prepared. The sample was divided into four test groups to study the effect of different duration of heat treatment to the surface topography; surface chemistry, titanium oxide layer thickness, blood contact angle, & blood drop diameter of titanium alloy samples were investigated to evaluate the effect of different durations of
... Show MoreThe main goal of this work is to put a simple model of the spectral energy distribution of binary stars called WW Cha. This model is built up on the extracted data from various telescopes and archives for the target WW Cha stars and then analyzing them using a python environment. The result of the fitting proposes that there are two protoplanetary disks around the WW Cha star, with different physical properties for each disk, such as the size of the inner disk being 10 AU, while the size of the outer disk being 300 AU. The shape of the outer disk is a flaring disk not a flat disk according to the value of the power law for the surface density (1.5). The emission in the disk is caused by small amorphous olivine grains rangin
... Show MoreIn the recent years, some of the newly constructed asphalt concrete pavements in Baghdad as well as other cities across Iraq showed premature failures with consequential negative impact on both roadway safety and economy. Frequently, load associated mode of failure (rutting and fatigue) as well as, occasionally, moisture damage in some poorly drained sections are the main failure types found in those newly constructed road.
In this research, hydrated lime was introduced into asphalt concrete mixtures of wearing course in two methods. The first one was the addition of dry lime on dry aggregate and the second one was the addition of dry lime on saturated surface dry aggregate moisturized by 2.0 to 3.0 percent of wa
... Show MoreThe slurry infiltrated fiber concrete (SIFCON) is nowadays considered a special type of high fiber content concrete; it is high strength and high performance material. This paper investigates the effect of spread steel fiber into the slurry mortar on some properties of SIFCON. According to fiber distribution, two sets were used in this investigation. The first set consisted of randomly distributing fibers inside the slurry. The second set was by placing the fibers in an orderly manner inside the slurry. Crimped steel fibers with an aspect ratio of (60) were used. Two different volume fractions percentage of (7% and 9%) by volume of mold were used in both sets for this study. Also, a w/c ratio of (0.35) and superplasticiz
... Show MoreSpatial data observed on a group of areal units is common in scientific applications. The usual hierarchical approach for modeling this kind of dataset is to introduce a spatial random effect with an autoregressive prior. However, the usual Markov chain Monte Carlo scheme for this hierarchical framework requires the spatial effects to be sampled from their full conditional posteriors one-by-one resulting in poor mixing. More importantly, it makes the model computationally inefficient for datasets with large number of units. In this article, we propose a Bayesian approach that uses the spectral structure of the adjacency to construct a low-rank expansion for modeling spatial dependence. We propose a pair of computationally efficient estimati
... Show MoreThe nonlinear optical properties for polymeric (PMMA) doping with dye Rhodmine (R3Go) has been studied .The samples are prepared by normal polymerization method with concentrations of 5x10-5mol/l and a thickness of 272.5µm.
Plasma effect was studied on samples prepared before and after exposure to the Nd: YAG laser for three times 5, 10 and 15 minutes. Z-Scan technique is used to determine the nonlinear optical properties such as; refractive index (n2) and the coefficient of nonlinear absorption (β). It was found that the nonlinear properties is change by increasi
... Show MoreDesigning machines and equipment for post-harvest operations of agricultural products requires information about their physical properties. The aim of the work was to evaluate the possibility of introducing a new approach to predict the moisture content in bean and corn seeds based on measuring their dimensions using image analysis using artificial neural networks (ANN). Experimental tests were carried out at three levels of wet basis moisture content of seeds: 9, 13 and 17%. The analysis of the results showed a direct relationship between the wet basis moisture content and the main dimensions of the seeds. Based on the statistical analysis of the seed material, it was shown that the characteristics
The study aims to find out the extent to which several Iraqi institutional accreditation standards (governance and administration, scientific research, curricula) are applied in two public universities (Baghdad and Middle Technical University) and two private universities (Uruk and Al-Mansour College) by diagnosing strengths and weaknesses and proposing a mechanism and procedures to help educational institution aims to reduce or eliminate the gap. The study stems from the extent of application of several Iraqi institutional accreditation standards represented as it was worked on through observation and field coexistence to reach scientific and practical facts. The method of case study and comparison betwe
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