Understanding the compatibility between spider silk and conducting materials is essential to advance the use of spider silk in electronic applications. Spider silk is tough, but becomes soft when exposed to water. Here we report a strong affinity of amine-functionalised multi-walled carbon nanotubes for spider silk, with coating assisted by a water and mechanical shear method. The nanotubes adhere uniformly and bond to the silk fibre surface to produce tough, custom-shaped, flexible and electrically conducting fibres after drying and contraction. The conductivity of coated silk fibres is reversibly sensitive to strain and humidity, leading to proof-of-concept sensor and actuator demonstrations.
Aim: To evaluate the side effects of Tamsulosin hydrochloride in fertility of experimental rats. Materials and methods: three groups of mice were used. First and second groups were injected [intraperitoneal (I.P.)] daily for 42 with 8 and 16 µg /kg mouse body weight (kg.b.wt) of Tamsulosin hydrochloride, respectively. Third group was injected with PBS (control). Several biological and histopathological studies were conducted on rat groups. Results: Significant decrease in number, motility and viability of epididymal sperm post injection with 16 µg /kg.b.wt, while injection with 8 µg /kg.b.wt reduced significantly, percentage of viability of sperm as compared with the control group. High percentage of abnormal sperm was observed in mice t
... Show MoreThe interests toward developing accurate automatic face emotion recognition methodologies are growing vastly, and it is still one of an ever growing research field in the region of computer vision, artificial intelligent and automation. However, there is a challenge to build an automated system which equals human ability to recognize facial emotion because of the lack of an effective facial feature descriptor and the difficulty of choosing proper classification method. In this paper, a geometric based feature vector has been proposed. For the classification purpose, three different types of classification methods are tested: statistical, artificial neural network (NN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM). A modified K-Means clustering algorithm
... Show MoreBac kground:: Septal deviation is one of the commonest anatomical deformities of the nasal skeleton, this deviation is usually accompanied by compensatory hypertrophy of the inferior turbinate on the concave side that will accentuate the severity of nasal obstruction.
Objectives: To evaluate the effect of septoplasty on the size of the inferior turbinate in patients with nasal septum deviation.
Methods: This is a prospective study of 25 patients attending the otolaryngological department at Al-Jirahat teaching hospital from September 2011 to November 2013, complaining mainly of nasal obstruction. Otolaryngological examination had shown nasal septum deviation. The cross sectional areas of inferior turbinates were measured with compu
This study uses the performance of the discretionary estimation models by using a sample of listed companies in the Netherlands and Germany. The actual accounting framework provides a wide opportunity for managers to influence data in financial reporting. The corporate reporting strategy, the way managers use their discretionary accounting, has a significant effect on the company's financial reporting. The authors contribute to the literature through enhancement to these models to accomplish better effects of identifying earnings management as well as to present evidence that is particular to the Dutch and German setting.
For this, we followed the methodology of Dechow, Sloan, and Sweeney (1995) and Chan
... Show MorePhotonic Crystal Fiber Interferometers (PCFIs) are greatly used
for sensing applications. This work presents the fabrication and
characterization of a relative humidity sensor based on Mach-
Zehnder Interferometer (MZI), which operates in reflection mode.
The humidity sensor operation based on the adsorption and
desorption of water vapour at the silica-air interface within the PCF.
The fabrication of this sensor is simple, it only includes splicing and
cleaving the PCF with SMF.PCF (LMA-10) with a certain length
spliced to SMF (Corning-28).
The spectrum of PCFI exhibits good sensitivity to humidity
variations. The PCFI response is observed for a range of humidity
values from (27% RH to 85% RH), the positi
Porous silicon (P-Si) has been produced in this work by photoelectrochemical (PEC) etching process. The irradiation has been achieved using diode laser of (2 W) power and 810 nm wavelength. The influence of various irradiation times on the properties of P-Si material such as P-Si layer thickness, surface aspect, pore diameter and the thickness of walls between pores as well as porosity and etching rate was investigated by depending on the scanning electron micrograph (SEM) technique and gravimetric measurements.
The rheological and fusion behavior of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) compounds plays a dominant role in
the processing operations and in the development of physical properties in the processed material. A
comprehensive study was made in this work to evaluate the effect of shear and thermal history on stability, mechanical and rheological properties of rigid PVC compounds. Different samples of Rigid Poly vinyl chloride including dry blend powder, granules, and bottles molded from both were examined. A study was also made on recycled RPVC where 25% of reclaimed material was continuously blended with fresh dry blend and processed for 15 cycles. Results showed that compaction of the PVC material took place in the brabender plastograph at co
Color image compression is a good way to encode digital images by decreasing the number of bits wanted to supply the image. The main objective is to reduce storage space, reduce transportation costs and maintain good quality. In current research work, a simple effective methodology is proposed for the purpose of compressing color art digital images and obtaining a low bit rate by compressing the matrix resulting from the scalar quantization process (reducing the number of bits from 24 to 8 bits) using displacement coding and then compressing the remainder using the Mabel ZF algorithm Welch LZW. The proposed methodology maintains the quality of the reconstructed image. Macroscopic and
Asphalt pavement properties in Iraq are highly affected by elevated summer air temperatures. One of these properties is stiffness (resilient modulus). To explain the effect of air temperatures on stiffness of asphalt concrete, it is necessary to determine the distribution of temperatures through the pavement asphalt concrete layers. In this study, the distribution of pavement temperatures at three depths (2cm,7cm, 10cm) below the pavement surface is determined by using the temperature data logger instrument. A relationship for determining pavement temperature as related to depth and air temperature has been suggested. To achieve the objective of this thesis, the prepared specimens have been tested for indirect tension in accordance with
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