In this study, the effect of fire flame on the punching shear strength of steel fiber reinforced concrete flat plates was experimentally investigated using nine half-scale specimens with dimensions of 1500×1500 mm and a total thickness of 100 mm. The main investigated variables comprised the steel fiber volume fraction 0, 1, and 1.5% and the burning steady state temperature 500 and 600 °C. The specimens were divided into three groups, each group consists of three specimens. The specimens in the first group were tested with no fire effect to be the reference specimens, while the others of the second and third groups were tested after being exposed to fire-flame effect. The adopted characteristics of the fire test were; (one hour) b

Low grade crude palm oil (LGCPO) presents as an attractive option as feedstock for biodiesel production due to its low cost and non-competition with food resources. Typically, LGCPO contains high contents of free fatty acids (FFA), rendering it impossible in direct trans-esterification processes due to the saponification reaction. Esterification is the typical pre-treatment process to reduce the FFA content and to produce fatty acid methyl ester (FAME). The pre-treatment of LGCPO using two different acid catalysts, such as titanium oxysulphate sulphuric acid complex hydrate (TiOSH) and 5-sulfosalicylic acid dihydrate (5-SOCAH) was investigated for the first time in this study. The optimum conditions for the homogenous catalyst (5-SOCAH) wer

Fingerprint recognition is one among oldest procedures of identification. An important step in automatic fingerprint matching is to mechanically and dependably extract features. The quality of the input fingerprint image has a major impact on the performance of a feature extraction algorithm. The target of this paper is to present a fingerprint recognition technique that utilizes local features for fingerprint representation and matching. The adopted local features have determined: (i) the energy of Haar wavelet subbands, (ii) the normalized of Haar wavelet subbands. Experiments have been made on three completely different sets of features which are used when partitioning the fingerprint into overlapped blocks. Experiments are conducted on

The ongoing research to improve the clinical outcome of titanium implants has resulted in the implementation of multiple approaches to deliver osteogenic growth factors accelerating and sustaining osseointegration. Here we show the presentation of human bone morphogenetic protein 7 (BMP-7) adsorbed to titanium discs coated with poly(ethyl acrylate) (PEA). We have previously shown that PEA promotes fibronectin organization into nanonetworks exposing integrin- and growth-factor-binding domains, allowing a synergistic interaction at the integrin/growth factor receptor level. Here, titanium discs were coated with PEA and fibronectin and then decorated with ng/mL doses of BMP-7. Human mesenchymal stem cells were used to investigate cellular resp

Many conservative sphincter-preserving procedures had been described to be effective in
healing of anal fistula without excision or de roofing.
Objective: To verify the outcome of mere photocoagulation of the fistula tract on healing of low anal
fistula.
Materials and Methods: Using 810nm diode laser, the tracts of low anal fistulae in a cohorts of six male
patients (mean age of 32 yr) had been photocoagulated by retrograde application of laser light through an
orb tip optical fiber threaded in to the tract. Swabs for culture and sensitivity testing were obtained before
and after laser application. Patients were followed up regularly to announce fistula healing.
Results: Mean laser exposure time was 6.6 min., mean

Background: Since the invention of laser in 1960, lasers have been developed and approved in many fields. Lasers can now be regarded as practical tools with unique properties that have been utilized effectively in several applications in fields of medical and biological sciences.Objectives: The aim of the current study was to preparation of vaccines (live attenuated and killed) by irradiation of the bacteria by the low level diode laser.Methods: six bacterial isolates were isolated from human samples of diabetic foot infections, which used for preparation of vaccines. The experiment was conducted on fifteen adult male rabbits; they were divided into three groups with 5 rabbits each. Blood samples were collected from the marginal ear vein

An analytical model in the form of a hyperbolic function has been suggested for the axial potential distribution of an electrostatic einzel lens. With the aid of this hyperbolic model the relative optical parameters have been computed and investigated in detail as a function of the electrodes voltage ratio for various trajectories of an accelerated charged-particles beam. The electrodes voltage ratio covered a wide range where the lens may be operated at accelerating and decelerating modes. The results have shown that the proposed hyperbolic field has the advantages of producing low aberrations under various magnification conditions and operational modes. The electrodes profile and their three-dimensional diagram have been determined whi

Motivated by the vital role played by transition metal nitride (TMN) composites in various industrial applications, the current study reports electronic properties, thermodynamic stability phase diagram, and vacancy formation energies of the plausible surfaces of NiAs and WC-type structures of δ3-MoN and δ-WN hexagonal phases, respectively. Low miller indices of various surface terminations of δ3-MoN and δ-WN namely, (100), (110), (111), and (001) have been considered. Initial cleaving of δ3-MoN bulk unit cell offers separate Mo and N terminations signified as δ3-MoN (100): Mo, δ3-MoN(100):N, δ3-MoN(111):Mo, δ3-MoN(111):Mo, and δ3-MoN(001):Mo. However, the (110) plane reveals mix-truncated with both molybdenum and nitrogen atoms i

Abstract

In the field of construction materials the glass reinforced mortar and Styrene Butadiene mortar are modern composite materials. This study experimentally investigated the effect of addition of randomly dispersed glass fibers and layered glass fibers on density and compressive strength of mortar with and without the presence of Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR). Mixtures of 1:2 cement/sand ratio and 0.5 water/cement ratio were prepared for making mortar. The glass fibers were added by two manners, layers and random with weight percentages of (0.54, 0.76, 1.1 and 1.42). The specimens were divided into two series: glass-fiber reinforced mortar without SBR and glass-fiber reinforced mortar with 7% SBR of mixture water. All s