The focus of this work is on systematically understanding the effects of packing density of the sand grains on both the internal and bulk mechanical properties for strip footing interacting with granular soil. The studies are based on particle image velocimetry (PIV) method, coupled with a high resolution imaging camera. This provides valuable new insights on the evolution of slip planes at grain-scale under different fractions of the ultimate load. Furthermore, the PIV based results are compared with finite element method simulations in which the experimentally characterised parameters and constitutive behaviour are fed as an input, and a good level of agreements are obtained. The reported results would serve to the practicing engineers, r

The effect of using grinded rocks of (quartzite and porcelanite) as powder of (10 and 20) % replacement by weight of cement for self-compacting concrete slabs was investigated in this study. Five slabs with 15 concrete cubes were tested experimentally at 28 days to study the compressive strength, ultimate load, ultimate deflection, ductility, crack load and steel strain. The test results show that, the compressive strength improvement when replacement of local rock powder reached to (7.3, 4.22) % for (10 and 20) % quartzite powder and (11.3, 16.1) % for (10 and 20) % porcelanite powder, respectively compared to the reference specimen. The ultimate load percentage increase for slabs with (10 and 20) % rep

The risk of significant concern is resistance to antibiotics for public health. The alternative treatment of metallic nanoparticles (NPs), such as heavy metals, effects on antibiotic resistance bacteria with different types of antibiotics of - impossible to treat using noval eco-friendly synthesis technique nanoparticles copper oxide (CuO NPs) preparation from S. epidermidis showed remarkable antimicrobial activity against S.aureus Minimum inhibitory concentra range (16,32,64,256,512) µg/ml via well diffusion method in vitro, discover those concentrations effected in those bacteria and the best concentration is 64 µg/ml, characterization CuO NPs to prove this included atomic force microscope, UV, X-ray Diffraction and TEM, and ant

Steganography is the art of secret communication. Its purpose is to hide the presence of information, using, for example, images as covers. The frequency domain is well suited for embedding in image, since hiding in this frequency domain coefficients is robust to many attacks. This paper proposed hiding a secret image of size equal to quarter of the cover one. Set Partitioning in Hierarchal Trees (SPIHT) codec is used to code the secret image to achieve security. The proposed method applies Discrete Multiwavelet Transform (DMWT) for cover image. The coded bit stream of the secret image is embedded in the high frequency subbands of the transformed cover one. A scaling factors ? and ? in frequency domain control the quality of the stego

Background: Mobile phones are approximately widely used everywhere like in hospital wards, clinics and universities as well as biomedical laboratories. They have become very important tool in students’ life. In contrast, these tools carry many harmful bacteria which are responsible for infectious diseases in human because they serve as a reservoir for different pathogens. Current study was aimed to isolate bacteria from students’ mobile phones at the Institute of Medical Technology/Al-Mansour/The Middle Technical University, Baghdad, Iraq. Also, the study investigated microbial resistance to many antimicrobial agents as well as the appropriate remedial measures. Method: Four hundred and fifty swabs from mobile phones were collected from

A study was conducted to evaluate the antibacterial effect of Phyllanthus emblica extract (ethanol:methanol, 1:1) against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli at different concentrations, i.e. 0.625, 1.25, 2.50, 5.0, 10.0 and 20.0 mg/ml. The antibacterial activity was determined by the agar well diffusion method to investigate the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC). The alcoholic extract of Phyllanthus emblica had the highest antibacterial activity at 20 mg/ml and 5 mg/ml except for Pseudomonas aeruginosa where the value of inhibition was between 20 and 10 mg/ml. The MIC concentrations were mostly very high and ranged from 5 to 1.25 mg/ml, while the MBC range fro

The synthesis and bioactivity of zinc oxide nanoparticles has been extensively studied. The antibacterial activity of different antibiotics individually (ceftriaxone (C), chloramphenicol (CRO), penicillin (P) and amoxicillin (Ax)) and Zinc oxide nanoparticles (60μg/ml) in combination with the previously mentioned antibiotics has been demonstrated in the present study by using the disk diffusion assay method. The results showed a synergistic effect between Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) and both Ax and P for most of the studied Gram-positive isolates (Staphylococcus aureus1, Staphylococcus aureus2, Staphylococcus epidermidis1, Staphylococcus epidermidis2, Enterococcus faecalis1, Enterococcus faecalis2 ) and between ZnO NPs and both C

The fabrication of Solid and Hollow silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) has been achieved and their characterization was performed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), zeta potential, UV–VIS spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction (XRD). A TEM image revealed a quasispherical form for both Solid and Hollow Ag NPs. The measurement of surface charge revealed that although Hollow Ag NPs have a zeta potential of -43 mV, Solid Ag NPs have a zeta potential of -33 mV. According to UV-VIS spectroscopy measurement Solid and Hollow Ag NPs both showed absorption peaks at wavelengths of 436 nm and 412 nm, respectively. XRD pattern demonstrates that the samples' crystal structure is cubic, similar to that of the bulk materials, with