In order to promote sustainable steel-concrete composite structures, special shear connectors that can facilitate deconstruction are needed. A lockbolt demountable shear connector (LB-DSC), including a grout-filled steel tube embedded in the concrete slab and fastened to a geometrically compatible partial-thread bolt, which is bolted on the steel section's top flange of a composite beam, was proposed. The main drawback of previous similar demountable bolts is the sudden slip of the bolt inside its hole. This bolt has a locked conical seat lug that is secured inside a predrilled compatible counter-sunk hole in the steel section's flange to provide a non-slip bolt-flange connection. Deconstruction is achieved by demounting the tube from the t

Due to severe scouring, many bridges failed worldwide. Therefore, the safety of the existing bridge (after contrition) mainly depends on the continuous monitoring of local scour at the substructure. However, the bridge's safety before construction mainly depends on the consideration of local scour estimation at the bridge substructure. Estimating the local scour at the bridge piers is usually done using the available formulae. Almost all the formulae used in estimating local scour at the bridge piers were derived from laboratory data. It is essential to test the performance of proposed local scour formulae using field data. In this study, the performance of selected bridge scours estimation formulae was validated and sta

The necessary optimality conditions with Lagrange multipliers  are studied and derived for a new class that includes the system of Caputo–Katugampola fractional derivatives to the optimal control problems with considering the end time free. The formula for the integral by parts has been proven for the left Caputo–Katugampola fractional derivative that contributes to the finding and deriving the necessary optimality conditions. Also, three special cases are obtained, including the study of the necessary optimality conditions when both the final time  and the final state  are fixed. According to convexity assumptions prove that necessary optimality conditions are sufficient optimality conditions.

This study is to investigate the possibility of using activated carbon prepared from Iraqi date-pits (ADP) which are produced from palm trees (Phoenix dactylifera L.) as low-cost reactive material in the permeable reactive barrier (PRB) for treating lead (Pb⁺²) from the contaminated groundwater, and then compare the results experimentally with other common reactive materials such as commercial activated carbon (CAC), zeolite pellets (ZP). Factors influencing sorption such as contact time, initial pH of the solution, sorbent dosage, agitation speed, and initial lead concentration has been studied. Two isotherm models were used for the description of sorption data (Langmuir and Freundlich). The maximum lead sorp

In this work, two different laser dye solutions were used to host highly-pure silicon nitride nanoparticles as scattering centers to fabricate random gain media. The laser dye was dissolved in three different solvents (ethanol, methanol and acetone) and the final results were obtained for methanol only. The silicon nitride nanoparticles were synthesized by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique with average particle size of 35 nm. The random gain medium was made as a solid rod with high spectral efficiency and low production cost. Optical emission with narrow linewidth was detected at 532-534 nm as 9 mg of silicon nitride nanoparticles were added to the 10 -5 M dye solution. The FWHM of 0.3 and 3.52 nm was determined for Rhodamine B and

The present work aimed to investigate the neuraminidase (nan1) gene expression in 32 different clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to explore the role of the enzyme in different types of infection and might give a better understanding of host cell-pathogens interaction. In addition, the effect of monosaccharide D-mannose on neuraminidase gene expression in eight isolates was studied by utilizing a reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). The results demonstrated that the highest expression of nan1 gene was in otitis samples (208,913.81) which were significantly higher than that from other infections (P < 0.01). While, the concentrations of gene copies obtained from urin

Carbamazepine (CBZ) is a narrow therapeutic index drug used in the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia and psychiatric disorders. Valerian (VAL) is a popular herbal product which should be prescribed to treat insomnia and anxiety. The study was designed to investigate the presence of significant pharmacokinetic (PK) interaction between Valerian (VAL) at different concentrations on Carbamazepine (CBZ) pharmacokinetic parameters in healthy male rabbits. In an in vivo, parallel-randomized controlled trial, the rabbits in three groups "first (control), second and third" were given oral doses of CBZ (50 mg/kg), for "second and third" groups (as test groups) rabbits were given (20 and 40 mg/kg/day) of the VAL respectively, as  suspensi

The experiment was conducted at the faculty of agriculture University of Ain Shams-Egypt, from January to March 2008, to study the effect of different levels of chromium yeast (cr-yeast) on broiler chickens on some physiological traits. A total of 450, one-day old unsexed chickens (Cobb) strain were used. The birds were randomly allocated to five treatments with 3 replicates each. The treatments were control (T1), without supplementation, T2, T3, T4 and T5 which were supplemented with 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 mg cr-yeast/kg diet respectively. Chromium yeast supplementation treatments caused a significant (p < 0.05) increase in plasma glucose levels, while supplemented Cr-yeast at levels of 1 (T3), 1.5 (T4), 2 (T5) mg/kg diet resulted in a signific