Death is undoubtedly the theme of Don DeLillo’s White Noise. Murray Siskind, a College-on-the-Hill professor who is obsessed with the exploration and reinterpretation of American popular culture, talks about the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the German mentor of Jack Gladney has been using the Egyptian Book of the Dead, translated into German. The core episode of the story is the Airborne Toxic Event, the associate of Heinrich (Jack’s teenage son), Orestes Mercator, dreams of becoming one of the great figures in the Guinness Book by challenging and confronting death by enclosing himself in a glass pen jam-packed with poisonous snakes, and Heinrich challenges an imprisoned mass murderer in a chess game. The scholarly expertise of Jack centers on the leading organizer of mass slaughter—Hitler—whereas Murray Siskind and his associates in the American Environments movement are fascinated with the melancholy related to the passing away of superstars and the killing of political figures, and the image of death in mainstream culture. In this paper, Don DeLillo’s White Noise is analyzed in relation to the fear of death with the guidance of the characters of the novel. Similar to others, Jack, who is the head of the Hitler course at the College-on-the-Hill and the storyteller of the narrative, and Babette, the wife of Jack who takes care of an old blind man and gives lecture on adult education, have been preoccupied with the concept of death due to their inexplicable fear of it. They are unable to admit or recognize death as a normal part of human existence. They are too absorbed by their fear of death that their emotions, thoughts, and everyday interactions are frequently disrupted by the uncertainty of death. Both of them assert their desire to die before the other because neither of them can endure the difficulty of surviving without the other. Yet, it is absurd that neither of them wishes to pass on first since the two of them dread death extremely.
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This study aimed at evaluating the torsional capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) beams externally wrapped with fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) materials. An analytical model was described and used as a new computational procedure based on the softened truss model (STM) to predict the torsional behavior of RC beams strengthened with FRP. The proposed analytical model was validated with the existing experimental data for rectangular sections strengthened with FRP materials and considering torque-twist relationship and crack pattern at failure. The confined concrete behavior, in the case of FRP wrapping, was considered in the constitutive laws of concrete in the model. Then, an efficient algorithm was developed in MATLAB environment t
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Reliability analysis methods are used to evaluate the safety of reinforced concrete structures by evaluating the limit state function 𝑔(𝑋𝑖). For implicit limit state function and nonlinear analysis , an advanced reliability analysis methods are needed. Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) can be used in this case however, as the number of input variables increases, the time required for MCS also increases, making it a time consuming method especially for complex problems with implicit performance functions. In such cases, MCS-based FORM (First Order Reliability Method) and Artificial Neural Network-based FORM (ANN FORM) have been proposed as alternatives. However, it is important to note that both MCS-FORM and ANN-FORM can also be time-con
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Background: A great dental and biomedical interest had been paid to silver nanoparticles because of their antimicrobial activity. Objective: To evaluate the antimicrobial and cytotoxic activity of a newly developed Nano-silver fluoride that was synthesized from moringa oleifera leaf extract against S. mutants. Material and method: The green synthesis method was used to prepare Nano-silver fluoride from moringa oleifera leaf extract. The minimum inhibitory concentration and the minimum bactericidal concentration were evaluated using brain heart infusion plates, while the cytotoxicity was evaluated by the hemolytic activity. Results: Nano-silver fluoride had a bactericidal and bacteriostatic effect (MIC was 60 ppm a
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This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a novel concrete-encased column (CE) using small circular steel tubes filled with cementitious grouting material (GFST) as the primary reinforcement instead of traditional steel bars. The research involved three different types of reinforcement: conventional steel bars, concrete-filled steel tubes with 30% of the reinforcement ratio of steel bars, and concrete-filled steel tubes with the same reinforcement ratio as steel bars. Twenty-four circular concrete columns were tested and categorized into six groups based on the type of reinforcement employed. Each group comprised four columns, with one subjected to concentric axial load, two subjected to eccentric axial load (with eccentrici
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Metronidazole-MIPs were prepared by using (MDZ) as the template as well as allylchloride (AYC) or allylbromide (AYB) as monomer, used (TMPTA) tri-methylol propane tri-acrylate or ethylene glycol di-methyl acrylate (EGDMA) as cross-linker and initiator used (BP) benzyl peroxide. By using different plasticizers (di butyl Phthalate (DBPH), Nitrobenzene (NB), oleic acid (OA) and paraffin) for MDZ-MIP1 and (Di-butyl sebecate (DBS), Di-methyl acrylate (DMA), Tributylphosphate(TBP) and Tris(ethylhexyl phosphate (TEHP) ) for MDZ-MIP2. Membranes of MIPs were prepared in PVC matrix. The characterizations of each electrode were determined The Slope range from (55.083 - 43.711) mV/decade, Limit of Detection (8 X 10 -4- 2 X 10-6) and Linearity
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Herein, the interfacial polymerization method has been used for the synthesis of PPy/NaVO3 composites with different compositions of NaVO3 (10 %, 20 %, 30 %, 40 % and 50 %) as an efficient electrode material for supercapacitors. The successful formation and composition of the as-prepared composites (PV1-PV5) were confirmed by FTIR, XRD, EDX, and SEM analysis. The electrochemical properties were investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanometric charge–discharge measurement (GCD), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) in 0.5 M H2SO4 electrolyte. As compared to other, the PV4 composite exhibit excellent specific capacitance of 391 F g−1 at a current density of 0.75 A/g with good cycling stability of ∼59 % after 1000 cycle
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Uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) is problematic and still the leading cause of urinary tract infections worldwide. It is developed resistance against most antibiotics. The investigation, surveillance system, and efficient strategy will facilitate selecting an appropriate treatment that could control the bacterial distribution. The present study aims to investigate the epidemiology and associated risk factors of uropathogenic E. coli and to study their antibiotic resistance patterns. 1585 midstream urine specimens were collected from symptomatic urinary tract infections (UTI) patients (225 males and 1360 females) admitted to Zakho emergency hospital, Zakho, Kurdistan Region, Iraq from January 2016 until the end of December 2
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