Silicon nitride nanostructures were prepared by reactive sputtering technique using silicon targets with different types of electrical conductivity (n-type and p-type) and Ar:N2 gas mixing ratio of 70:30. The optical microscopy and spectroscopic characteristics of these films were determined in order to introduce the effect of target conductivity type on these characteristics. The results showed that using p-type silicon target would produce Si3N4 films with lower tendency to adsorb water vapor and other constituents of the atmospheric air, higher absorbance in the visible range 400-700nm, and lower variation in the energy band gap with film thickness than the Si3N4 films prepared from n-type silicon target.

Among the available chaotic modulation schemes, differential chaos shift keying (DSCK) offers the perfect noise performance. The power consumption of DCSK is high since it sends chaotic signal in both of 1 and 0 transmission, so it does not represent the optimal choice for some applications like indoor wireless sensing where power consumption is a critical issue. In this paper a novel noncoherent chaotic communication scheme called differential chaos on-off keying (DCOOK) is proposed as a solution of this problem. With the proposed scheme, the DCOOK signal have a structure similar to chaos on-off keying (COOK) scheme with improved performance in noisy and multipath channels by introducing the concept of differential coherency used in DCS

Photonic Crystal Fiber Interferometers (PCFIs) are widely used for sensing applications. This work presents the fabrication and the characterization of a relative humidity sensor based on a polymer-coated photonic crystal fiber that operates in a Mach- Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) transmission mode. The fabrication of the sensor involved splicing a short (1 cm) length of Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) between two single-mode fibers (SMF). It was then coated with a layer of agarose solution. Experimental results showed that a high humidity sensitivity of 29.37 pm/%RH was achieved within a measurement range of 27–95%RH. The sensor also showed good repeatability, small size, measurement accuracy and wide humidity range. The RH sensitivity o

Photonic Crystal Fiber Interferometers (PCFIs) are widely used for sensing applications. This work presents the fabrication and study the characterization of a relative humidity sensor based on a polymer-infiltrated photonic crystal fiber that operates in a Mach- Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) reflection mode. The fabrication of the sensor only involves splicing and cleaving Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) with Single Mode Fiber (SMF). A stub of (LMA-10) PCF spliced to SMF (Corning-28). In the splice regions. The PCFI sensor operation based on the adsorption and desorption of water vapour at the silica-air interface within the PCF. The sensor shows a high sensitivity to RH variations from (27% RH - 95% RH), with a change in its reflected powe

Background: Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a common health problem that has a worldwide distribution. Apart from the direct effect of the virus on the liver, there are many extrahepatic manifestations among which the probable effect on bone turnover associated with low bone mineral density (BMD). Objectives: This study aimed to determine the association between treated and untreated chronic HBV infection with BMD. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study which included a total of 48 patients with chronic HBV (28 patients treated with tenofovir-disoproxil-fumarate [TDF] antiviral drug and 20 patients have not yet started treatment). Other age- and sex-matched 30 apparently healthy individuals were recruited to represent the hea

The study investigated the behaviour of asphalt concrete mixes for aggregate gradations, according to the Iraqi specification using the Bailey method designed by an Excel spreadsheet. In mixing aggregates with varying gradations (coarse and fine aggregate), The Bailey method is a systematic methodology that offers aggregate interlocking as the backbone of the framework and a controlled gradation to complete the blends. Six types of gradation are used according to the bailey method considered in this study. Two-course prepared Asphalt Concrete Wearing and Asphalt Concrete binder, the Nominal Maximum Aggregate Sizes (NMAS) of the mixtures are 19 and 12.5 mm, respectively. The total number of specimens was 240 for both layers (15 samp