English

One of the key challenges is reliable communication for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) since underwater environments are dynamic and challenging for signal transmission. The traditional acoustic communication systems allow long-distance communication but are limited by the low bandwidth, high latency, and doppler effect. Optical wireless, on the other hand, provides high data rates with water absorption and scattering occurring within the transmission distance, but has a short range of communication. To overcome these drawbacks, a smart hybrid optical-acoustic communication system is proposed that is a combination of Wavelength Division Multiplexing and On-Off Keying (WDM-OOK) to transmit a high-speed signal over optical and ac

A novel demountable shear connector for precast steel-concrete composite bridges is presented. The connector uses high-strength steel bolts, which are fastened to the top flange of the steel beam with the aid of a special locking nut configuration that prevents bolts from slipping within their holes. Moreover, the connector promotes accelerated construction and overcomes the typical construction tolerance issues of precast structures. Most importantly, the connector allows bridge disassembly. Therefore, it can address different bridge deterioration scenarios with minimum disturbance to traffic flow including the following: (1) precast deck panels can be rapidly uplifted and replaced; (2) connectors can be rapidly removed and replaced; and (

Objective: The evaluation of serum osteocalcin (OSN) for Iraqi infertile patients to see the effect of osteocalcin insufficiency, which may lead to a decreased level of testosterone production in males that may cause infertility. Methods: Forty two newly diagnosed infertile males age range (24–47) years and thirty two apparently healthy males as controls age range (25–58) years. Serum levels of testosterone (TEST), stimulating follicle hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH), prolactin (PROL), osteocalcin OSN, and fasting blood sugar (FBS) were performed in both patients and controls. Estimation of serum OSN by Immulite1000 auto-analyzer, TEST, FSH, LH, PROL, and FBS by Immulite2000 auto-analyzer. Results: Infertile patients

A frequently used approach for denoising is the shrinkage of coefficients of the noisy signal representation in a transform domain. This paper proposes an algorithm based on hybrid transform (stationary wavelet transform proceeding by slantlet transform); The slantlet transform is applied to the approximation subband of the stationary wavelet transform. BlockShrink thresholding technique is applied to the hybrid transform coefficients. This technique can decide the optimal block size and thresholding for every wavelet subband by risk estimate (SURE). The proposed algorithm was executed by using MATLAB R2010aminimizing Stein’s unbiased with natural images contaminated by white Gaussian noise. Numerical results show that our algorithm co