Objective: In this work we design and evaluate a bidirectional pneumatic soft actuator made from silicone rubber (RTV2 C10) for the use in prosthetic hand. The actuator aimed to enhance flexibility and provide motion in two directions that mimic the actions of the human fingers. Materials and Methods: Two parallel air chambers are used in the actuator design where each chamber is divided into smaller internal cavities. These chambers are linked through a narrow connecting channel. The fabrication process relied on a molding technique based on 3D printed molds. Three separate mold components were designed and printed to allow accurate casting of silicone rubber into the desired shape. The completed actuators were then tested using an experim

In this paper, we will focus to one of the recent applications of PU-algebras in the coding theory, namely the construction of codes by soft sets PU-valued functions. First, we shall introduce the notion of soft sets PU-valued functions on PU-algebra and investigate some of its related properties.Moreover, the codes generated by a soft sets PU-valued function are constructed and several examples are given. Furthermore, example with graphs of binary block code constructed from a soft sets PU-valued function is constructed.

  Functionally graded materials (FGMs), with ceramic –ceramic constituents are fabricated using powder technology techniques. In this work three different sets of FGMs samples were designed in to 3 layers, 5 layers and 7 layers. The ceramic constituents were represented by hard ferrite (Barium ferrite) and soft ferrite (lithium ferrite). All samples sintered at constant temperature at 1100^oC for 2 hrs. and characterized by FESEM. Some physical properties were measured for fabricated FGMs include apparent density, bulk density, porosity, shrinkage and hardness. The results indicated that the density increase with the increase the number of layer. Lateral shrinkage is one of the important parameter f

Random throwing of industrial waste has a significant impact on the environment unless it takes into account the conditions of engineered destroying and/or re-used. Taking the advantage of re-using waste materials in engineering projects represents a well-planned project in order to resolve a lot of engineering problems for some difficult soils. The objective of this study was to evaluate the capability and effects of Rubber Shreds (RS) from scrap torn belts towards improving the shear strength of soft clay. A direct shear tests were conducted on soft clay-RS mixture. The following parameters were investigated to study the influence of RS content, water content, normal stress, and dilation ratio. From experimental test results it was fou

    Soft clays are generally sediments deposited by rivers, seas, or lakes. These soils are fine-grained plastic soils with appreciable clay content and are characterized by high compressibility and low shear strength. To deal with soft soil problems there is more than one method that can be used such as soil replacement, preloading, stone column, sand drains, lime stabilization and Prefabricated Vertical Drains, PVDs. A numerical modeling of PVD with vacuum pressure was analyzed to investigate the effect of this technique on the consolidation behavior of fully and different depths of partially saturated soft soils.  Laboratory experiments were also conducted by using a specially-designed large consol

Metabolic dysregulation and obesity are associated with many metabolic alterations, including impairment of insulin sensitivity and dyslipidemia. Recent studies highlight the key role of phosphatidylinositol 3,4,5-triphosphate-dependent Rac exchange proteins (PREX proteins) in the pathogenesis of obesity, advocating further elucidation of their potential therapeutic implications. The present study aimed to estimate the serum level of PREX proteins and its potential association with insulin resistance markers and plasma lipids level in obese and overweight non-diabetic patients. The study included 30 persons classified as obese, 30 as overweight, and 30 healthy individuals of similar age and gender. The levels of PREX1 and PREX2 were

Facial recognition has been an active field of imaging science. With the recent progresses in computer vision development, it is extensively applied in various areas, especially in law enforcement and security. Human face is a viable biometric that could be effectively used in both identification and verification. Thus far, regardless of a facial model and relevant metrics employed, its main shortcoming is that it requires a facial image, against which comparison is made. Therefore, closed circuit televisions and a facial database are always needed in an operational system. For the last few decades, unfortunately, we have experienced an emergence of asymmetric warfare, where acts of terrorism are often committed in secluded area with no

Most recognition system of human facial emotions are assessed solely on accuracy, even if other performance criteria are also thought to be important in the evaluation process such as sensitivity, precision, F-measure, and G-mean. Moreover, the most common problem that must be resolved in face emotion recognition systems is the feature extraction methods, which is comparable to traditional manual feature extraction methods. This traditional method is not able to extract features efficiently. In other words, there are redundant amount of features which are considered not significant, which affect the classification performance. In this work, a new system to recognize human facial emotions from images is proposed. The HOG (Histograms of Or

Benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH), non-cancerous enlargement of prostate, is the most prevalent disease entity in elderly men. BPH affects 40% of men after the age of 60year worldwide. BPH causes problems for patients with significant lower urinary tract obstructive symptoms, if not responding to medical therapy, surgical intervention is instituted. One method of the treatment of symptomatic BPH is laser prostatectomy. The understanding of tissue effects by laser radiation is very important for the safe clinical application of laser. Objective: study the 2100 nm Ho: YAG laser gross tissue effects in the prostate at different laser dose settings in an vitro model prostate tissue samples harvested from same specimen of open surgery prostat

Objectives The strategies of tissue-engineering led to the development of living cell-based therapies to repair lost or damaged tissues, including periodontal ligament and to construct biohybrid implant. This work aimed to isolate human periodontal ligament stem cells (hPDLSCs) and implant them on fabricated polycaprolactone (PCL) for the regeneration of natural periodontal ligament (PDL) tissues. Methods hPDLSCs were harvested from extracted human premolars, cultured, and expanded to obtain PDL cells. A PDL-specific marker (periostin) was detected using an immunofluorescent assay. Electrospinning was applied to fabricate PCL at three concentrations (13%, 16%, and 20% weight/volume) in two forms, which were examined through field emission