Carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) were widely used in strengthening reinforced concrete members
in the last few years, these fibers consist mainly of high strength fibers which increase the member capacity in addition to changing the mode of failure of the reinforced concrete beams. Experimental and theoretical investigations were carried to find the behavior of reinforced concrete beams strengthened by CFRP in shear and bending. The experimental work included testing of 12 beams divided into 4 groups; each group contains 3 beams. The following parameters were taken into consideration: - Concrete crushing strength. - CFRP strengthening location (shear strengthening and both shear and flexure strengthening). Reinforced beams were

In high-dimensional semiparametric regression, balancing accuracy and interpretability often requires combining dimension reduction with variable selection. This study intro- duces two novel methods for dimension reduction in additive partial linear models: (i) minimum average variance estimation (MAVE) combined with the adaptive least abso- lute shrinkage and selection operator (MAVE-ALASSO) and (ii) MAVE with smoothly clipped absolute deviation (MAVE-SCAD). These methods leverage the flexibility of MAVE for sufficient dimension reduction while incorporating adaptive penalties to en- sure sparse and interpretable models. The performance of both methods is evaluated through simulations using the mean squared error and variable selection cri

A potential alternative energy resource to meet energy demands is the vast amount of gas stored in hydrate reserves. However, major challenges in terms of exploration and production surround profitable and effective exploitation of these reserves. The measurement of acoustic velocity is a useful method for exploration of gas hydrate reserves and can be an efficient method to characterize the hydrate-bearing sediments. In this study, the compressional wave velocity (P-wave velocity) of consolidated sediments (Bentheimer) with and without tetrahydrofuran hydrate-bearing pore fillings were measured using the pulse transmission method. The study has found that the P-wave velocity of consolidated sediments increase with increasing hydrate format

This study aims at shedding light on the linguistic significance of collocation networks in the academic writing context. Following Firth’s principle “You shall know a word by the company it keeps.” The study intends to examine three selected nodes (i.e. research, study, and paper) shared collocations in an academic context. This is achieved by using the corpus linguistic tool; GraphColl in #LancsBox software version 5 which was announced in June 2020 in analyzing selected nodes. The study focuses on academic writing of two corpora which were designed and collected especially to serve the purpose of the study. The corpora consist of a collection of abstracts extracted from two different academic journals that publish for writ

Angiogenesis is important for tissue during normal physiological processes as well as in a number of diseases, including cancer. Drug resistance is one of the largest difficulties to antiangiogenesis therapy. Due to their lower cytotoxicity and stronger pharmacological advantage, phytochemical anticancer medications have a number of advantages over chemical chemotherapeutic drugs. In the current study, the effectiveness of AuNPs, AuNPs-GAL, and free galangin as an antiangiogenesis agent was evaluated. Different physicochemical and molecular approaches have been used including the characterization, cytotoxicity, scratch wound healing assay, and gene expression of VEGF and ERKI in MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cell line. Re

In this work, the photodetection performance of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofibers and its composite with yttrium oxide (Y2O3) at different concentrations (2.5, 5, 10) wt% are examined deposited on p-type Si with (111) orientation. Electrospinning technique was used to create nanofiber composites. Adding Y2O3 significantly impacts the PVA nanofibers where ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy optical absorption energy gap decreases with increased concentration (2.8, 2.6, and 2.3) eV. X-ray diffraction was used to investigate crystal structure, which is cubic structure. The chemical composition study was conducted using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) spectra, which revealed the stretching vibrations related to the Y-O bon

Introduction and Aim: The pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-39, a member of the IL-12 family plays a key role in the inflammatory response by modulating immune cell activity and inflammation. A literature search shows no study undertaken for the effect of IL-39's on arthritis so far. Hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate the role of IL-39 in rheumatoid arthritis. Materials and Methods: This study involved 80 patients with rheumatoid arthritis registered at the Rheumatology Clinic at Baghdad teaching hospital. The patients were divided into three groups based on treatments received. Group 1 included patients who were not on any treatment for arthritis, Group 2 with patients on hydroxychloroquine and or prednisone treatment,

 Inflammatory bowel disease includes both Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is a chronic, progressive relapsing disease of gastrointestinal tract that require long-term treatment or maintenance therapy. Taking patient’s beliefs about the prescribed medication in consideration had been shown to be an important factor that affects compliance of the patient in whom having positive beliefs is a prerequisite for better compliance. The aim of the current study was to investigate and assess beliefs about medicines among a sample of Iraqi patients with inflammatory bowel disease and to determine possible association between these beliefs and some patient-specific factors.

This study is a cross-sectional study carried out o

Increasing the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of silicon solar cells by improving their junction properties or minimizing light reflection losses remains a major challenge. Extensive studies were carried out in order to develop an effective antireflection coating for monocrystalline solar cells. Here we report on the preparation of a nanostructured cerium oxide thin film by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) as an antireflection coating for silicon solar cell. The structural, optical, and electrical properties of a cerium oxide nanostructure film are investigated as a function of the number of laser pulses. The X-ray diffraction results reveal that the deposited cerium oxide films are crystalline in nature and have a cubic fluorite. The field