BACKGROUND: SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is considered a highly infectious and life threatening disease. OBJECTIVE: The present paper aims to evaluate various aspects of preventive measures and clinical management of the scheduled visits for orthodontic patients to the dental clinics during the outbreak of COVID-19, and to assess how orthodontists dealt with this challenge. METHODS: Orthodontists in private and public clinics were invited to fill a questionnaire that addressed infection control protocols and concerns about clinical management of patients in the clinics during the pandemic. Frequncies and percentages of the responses were obtained and compared using Chi-square tests. RESULTS: About 77% of those working in private clinics, a

In this paper, a least squares group finite element method for solving coupled Burgers' problem in   2-D is presented. A fully discrete formulation of least squares finite element method is analyzed, the backward-Euler scheme for the time variable is considered, the discretization with respect to space variable is applied as biquadratic quadrangular elements with nine nodes for each element. The continuity, ellipticity, stability condition and error estimate of least squares group finite element method are proved.  The theoretical results  show that the error estimate of this method is . The numerical results are compared with the exact solution and other available literature when the convection-dominated case to illustrate the effic

The linear segment with parabolic blend (LSPB) trajectory deviates from the specified waypoints. It is restricted to that the acceleration must be sufficiently high. In this work, it is proposed to engage modified LSPB trajectory with particle swarm optimization (PSO) so as to create through points on the trajectory. The assumption of normal LSPB method that parabolic part is centered in time around waypoints is replaced by proposed coefficients for calculating the time duration of the linear part. These coefficients are functions of velocities between through points. The velocities are obtained by PSO so as to force the LSPB trajectory passing exactly through the specified path points. Also, relations for velocity correction and exact v

This paper presents an approach to license plate localization and recognition. A proposed method is designed to control the opening of door gate based on the recognition of the license plates number in Iraq. In general the system consists of four stages; Image capturing, License plate cropping, character segmentation and character recognition. In the first stage, the vehicle photo is taken from standard camera placed on the door gate with a specific distance from the front of vehicle to be processed by our system. Then, the detection method searches for the matching of the license plate in the image with a standard plate. The segmentation stage is performed by is using edge detection. Then character recognition, done by comparing with templ

This paper presents a robust control method for the trajectory control of the robotic manipulator. The standard Computed Torque Control (CTC) is an important method in the robotic control systems but its not robust to system uncertainty and external disturbance. The proposed method overcome the system uncertainty and external disturbance problems. In this paper, a robustification term has been added to the standard CTC. The stability of the proposed control method is approved by the Lyapunov stability theorem.  The performance of the presented controller is tested by MATLAB-Simulink environment and is compared with different control methods to illustrate its robustness and performance.

This research involves the synthesis of some sulphanyl benzimidazole derivatives (Ia-c), which were prepared from reaction of 2-mercaptobenzimidazole substituted benzyl halide, and structures were identified by spectral methods[FTIR, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR].These compounds were investigated as corrosion inhibitors for carbon steel in 1M H2SO4 solution using weight loss, potentiostatic polarization methods; obtained results showed that the sulphanyl benzimidazole derivatives retard both cathodic and anodic reactions in acidic media, by virtue of adsorption on the carbon steel surface. This adsorption obeyed Langmuir’s adsorption isotherm. The inhibition efficiency of (Ia-c) ranging between (65-92) %. By using different Ib derivative conc

This paper identifies and describes the textual densities of ideational metaphors through the application of GM theory (Halliday, 1994) to the textual analysis of two twentieth century English short stories: one American (The Mansion (1910-11), by Henry Jackson van Dyke Jr.), and one British (Home (1951), by William Somerset Maugham). One aim is to get at textually verifiable statistical evidence that attests to the observed dominance of GM nominalization in academic and scientific texts, rather than to fiction (e.g. Halliday and Martin (1993). Another aim is to explore any significant differentiation in GM’s us by the two short- story writers. The research has been carried out by identifying, describing, and statistically analysi

Coagulation is the most important process in drinking water treatment. Alum coagulant increases the aluminum residuals, which have been linked in many studies to Alzheimer's disease. Therefore, it is very important to use it with the very optimal dose. In this paper, four sets of experiments were done to determine the relationship between raw water characteristics: turbidity, pH, alkalinity, temperature, and optimum doses of alum [   .14 O] to form a mathematical equation that could replace the need for jar test experiments. The experiments were performed under different conditions and under different seasonal circumstances. The optimal dose in every set was determined, and used to build a gene expression model (GEP). The models were co