Background: With the increased in the demands of adult orthodontics, the challenge of direct bonding to non-enamel surface (zirconium) had been increased. The present study was carried out to compare the shear bond strength of three different brackets (stainless steel, sapphire and composite) bonded to zirconium surface and study the mode of bond failure. Materials and methods: The sample was comprised of 30 models (8mm *6mm*1.5mm) of full contour zirconium veneers. They were divided into three groups according to the brackets type; all samples were treated first by sandblast with aluminum oxide particle 50 µm then coated by z-prime plus primer. A central incisor bracket of each group was bonded to the prepared zirconium surface with light cure adhesive resin (Transbond TM XT, 3M Unitek, USA). Shear bond strength was measured by using Tinius Olsen universal testing machine at crosshead speed of 0.5\min. After debonding, each bracket and zirconium surface were examined using magnifying lens and adhesive remnant index was recorded. The difference in shear bond strength between main groups was analyzed by using ANOVA at p≤0.05. Results: The results revealed high significant difference among all tested groups and the highest value was for sapphire brackets (7.49±1.45 Mpa) of all groups followed by stainless steel brackets (6.46±1.43Mpa) and composite brackets had the least value (4.35±0.72). Non-significant difference in the site of bond failure among all groups of brackets and zirconium-adhesive interface failure (score III) was the predominant. Conclusion: the new zirconium prime plus primer can be successfully used in bonding stainless steel and sapphire brackets to zirconium surface.
Background: The roles of AI in the academic community continue to grow, especially in the enhancement of learning outcomes and the improvement of writing quality and efficiency. Objectives: To explore in depth the experience of senior pharmacy students in using artificial intelligence for academic purposes. Methods: This qualitative study included face-to-face individual interviews with senior pharmacy students from March to May 2023 using a pre-planned interview guide of open-ended questions. All interviews were audio-recorded. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Results: The results were obtained from 15 in-depth face-to-face interviews with senior pharmacy students (5th and 4th years). Eight participants were male, an
... Show MoreBobbin friction stir welding (BFSW) is a variant of the conventional friction stir welding (CFSW); it can weld the upper and lower surface of the work-piece in the same pass. This technique involves the bonding of materials without melting. In this work, the influence of tool design on the mechanical properties of welding joints of 6061-T6 aluminum alloy with 6.25 mm thickness produced by FSW bobbin tools was investigated and the best bobbin tool design was determined. Five different probe shapes (threaded straight cylindrical, straight cylindrical with 3 flat surfaces, straight cylindrical with 4 flat surfaces, threaded straight cylindrical with 3 flat surface and threaded straight cylindrical with 4 flat surfaces) with various dimensio
... Show MoreBackground: The roles of AI in the academic community continue to grow, especially in the enhancement of learning outcomes and the improvement of writing quality and efficiency. Objectives: To explore in depth the experience of senior pharmacy students in using artificial intelligence for academic purposes. Methods: This qualitative study included face-to-face individual interviews with senior pharmacy students from March to May 2023 using a pre-planned interview guide of open-ended questions. All interviews were audio-recorded. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Results: The results were obtained from 15 in-depth face-to-face interviews with senior pharmacy students (5th and 4th years). Eight participants were male, and seven
... Show MoreThis work targeted studying organogel as a potential floating system. Organgel has an excellent viscoelastic properties, floating system posses a depot property. Different formulations of 12-hydroxyoctadecanoic acid (HOA) in sesame oil were gelled and selecting F1, F3 and F5 HOA organogels for various examinations: tabletop rheology, optical microscopy, and oscillatory rheology studies. Also, the floating properties studies were conducted at in vitro and in-vivo levels. Lastly, the in-vitro release study using cinnarizine (CN) was to investigate the organogel depot property. Based on the results, the selected concentrations of HOA in sesame oil organogels showed temperature transitions fr
... Show MoreWater quality planning relies on Biochemical Oxygen Demand BOD. BOD testing takes five days. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is increasingly used for water resource forecasting. This work designed a PSO technique for estimating everyday BOD at Al-Rustumiya wastewater treatment facility inlet. Al-Rustumiya wastewater treatment plant provided 702 plant-scale data sets during 2012-2022. The PSO model uses the daily data of the water quality parameters, including chemical oxygen demand (COD), chloride (Cl-), suspended solid (SS), total dissolved solids (TDS), and pH, to determine how each variable affects the daily incoming BOD. PSO and multiple linear regression (MLR) findings are compared, and their performance is evaluated usin
... Show MoreMassive multiple-input multiple-output (massive-MIMO) is considered as the key technology to meet the huge demands of data rates in the future wireless communications networks. However, for massive-MIMO systems to realize their maximum potential gain, sufficiently accurate downlink (DL) channel state information (CSI) with low overhead to meet the short coherence time (CT) is required. Therefore, this article aims to overcome the technical challenge of DL CSI estimation in a frequency-division-duplex (FDD) massive-MIMO with short CT considering five different physical correlation models. To this end, the statistical structure of the massive-MIMO channel, which is captured by the physical correlation is exploited to find sufficiently
... Show MoreWater quality planning relies on Biochemical Oxygen Demand BOD. BOD testing takes five days. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is increasingly used for water resource forecasting. This work designed a PSO technique for estimating everyday BOD at Al-Rustumiya wastewater treatment facility inlet. Al-Rustumiya wastewater treatment plant provided 702 plant-scale data sets during 2012-2022. The PSO model uses the daily data of the water quality parameters, including chemical oxygen demand (COD), chloride (Cl-), suspended solid (SS), total dissolved solids (TDS), and pH, to determine how each variable affects the daily incoming BOD. PSO and multiple linear regression (MLR) findings are compared, and their perfor
... Show MoreThe educational sector is one of the important sectors in the world, and it is considered one of the means of community development. In addition, it is one of the means of making the country’s renaissance and devel-opment because it represents the factory of thinking minds that make change. There is no doubt that this sector is the same as any other sector. The deficit in the studied scientific planning has been prolonged, which led to its deterioration, and the problems of education remain diverse and inherited from previous time periods, where the hierarchical cluster analysis was used on postgraduate students in universities in Iraq, except for Kurdistan region, and the number of universities that were included in the study was
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