Background: The desire for an attractive appearing fixed orthodontic appliance fueled the use of ceramic brackets and clear accessories. Elastics are one of the most versatile materials available to orthodontists so studying their effect on the esthetic appearance is important. This an in vivo study, conducted to evaluate the effect of exposing stretched clear elastomeric ligatures to the oral environment from four different companies (OrthoTechnology, Morelli, Ortho Organizer, and Ormco). Materials and Methods: A total of 240 elastomeric modules were examined, 60 modules from each brand. Each of the 60 patients enrolled in the study, received 4 elastomeric modules on the 4 lower incisors, one from each brand. The specimens were placed on t

The process of accurate localization of the basic components of human faces (i.e., eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, etc.) from images is an important step in face processing techniques like face tracking, facial expression recognition or face recognition. However, it is a challenging task due to the variations in scale, orientation, pose, facial expressions, partial occlusions and lighting conditions. In the current paper, a scheme includes the method of three-hierarchal stages for facial components extraction is presented; it works regardless of illumination variance. Adaptive linear contrast enhancement methods like gamma correction and contrast stretching are used to simulate the variance in light condition among images. As testing material

          The primary objective of this paper is to improve a biometric authentication and classification model using the ear as a distinct part of the face since it is unchanged with time and unaffected by facial expressions. The proposed model is a new scenario for enhancing ear recognition accuracy via modifying the AdaBoost algorithm to optimize adaptive learning. To overcome the limitation of image illumination, occlusion, and problems of image registration, the Scale-invariant feature transform technique was used to extract features. Various consecutive phases were used to improve classification accuracy. These phases are image acquisition, preprocessing, filtering, smoothing, and feature extraction. To assess the proposed

The present work describes numerical and experimental investigation of the heat transfer characteristics in a plate-fin, having built-in piezoelectric actuator mounted on the base plate (substrate). The geometrical configuration considered in the present work is representative of a single element of the plate-fin and triple fins. Air is taken as the working fluid. A performance data for a single rectangular fin and triple fins are provided for different frequency levels (5, 30 and
50HZ) , different input power (5,10,20,30,40 and 50W) and different inlet velocity (0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6m/s) for the single rectangular fin and triple fins with and without oscillation. The investigation was also performed with different geometrical fin

Biological activity of the carotenoids which are produced fromchemically-mutaed local isolate of Rhodotorula mucilaginosawas studied. The results showed variation of inhibition activity of caritenoids against different types of pathogenic bacteria include, Staph aureus, E. coli, B. subtilis and Salmo. typh., the number declined from 2×107cell/ml to 2×104, 5×104, 2×105, 9×105 cell/ml respectively after 24hour. The produced carotenoids from alocal mutant Rhodotorula mucilaginosa revealed an antioxidant activity as free radical removal of 85.6%. Carotinoides revealed a highest stability in petroleum ether solvent for 30 days at room temperature. It found that the pigment was more stability in sesame oil compared with sun flower and coc

Cu-Al-Ni shape memory alloy specimens has been fabricated using powder metallurgy technique with tube furnace and vacuum sintering environment , three range of Nb powder weight percentage (0.3,0.6,0.9)% has been added. Micro hardness and sliding wear resist has been tested followed by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscope (EDX) for micro structure observation. The experimental test for the samples has showed that the increase of Nb powder weight percentage in the master alloy has a significant effect on increasing the hardness and decreasing the wear resist therefore it will enhance the mechanical properties for this alloy.

The melting duration in the photovoltaic/phase-change material (PV/PCM) system is a crucial parameter for thermal energy management such that its improvement can realize better energy management in respect to thermal storage capabilities, thermal conditions, and the lifespan of PV modules. An innovative and efficient technique for improving the melting duration is the inclusion of an exterior metal foam layer in the PV/PCM system. For detailed investigations of utilizing different metal foam configurations in terms of their convective heat transfer coefficients, the present paper proposes a newly developed mathematical model for the PV/PCM–metal foam assembly that can readily be implemented with a wide range of operating condition