Objective: The approximate life span of a silicone maxillofacial prosthesis is as short as1.5–2 years of clinical service, then a new prosthesis should be fabricated. The most common reasonfor re-making the prosthesis is silicone mechanical properties degradation. The aim of this studywas to assess some mechanical properties of VST-30 silicone for maxillofacial prostheses after addi-tion of intrinsic pigments.Methods: Two types of intrinsic pigments (rayon flocking and burnt sienna); each of them wasincorporated into silicone. One hundred and twenty samples were prepared and split into 4 groupsaccording to the conducted tests (tear strength, hardness, surface roughness, and tensile strengthand elongation percentage) with 30 samples for ea

Community detection is useful for better understanding the structure of complex networks. It aids in the extraction of the required information from such networks and has a vital role in different fields that range from healthcare to regional geography, economics, human interactions, and mobility. The method for detecting the structure of communities involves the partitioning of complex networks into groups of nodes, with extensive connections within community and sparse connections with other communities. In the literature, two main measures, namely the Modularity (Q) and Normalized Mutual Information (NMI) have been used for evaluating the validation and quality of the detected community structures. Although many optimization algo

The technology of subsurface soil water retention (SWRT) uses a polyethylene ‎trough that is fixed under the root zone of the plant. It is a modern technology to increase the values of water ‎use efficiency, plant productivity and saving irrigation water by applying as little irrigation water ‎as possible. This study work aims at improving the crop yield and water use efficiency of a cucumber plant with less applied irrigation water by installing membrane trough below the soil surface. The field experiment was conducted in the Hawr Rajab District of ‎Baghdad Governorate in Winter 2018 for testing various trickle irrigation ‎systems. Two agricultural ‎treatment plots were utilized in a greenhouse for the compa

This paper presents a new design of a nonlinear multi-input multi-output PID neural controller of the active brake steering force and the active front steering angle for a 2-DOF vehicle model based on modified Elman recurrent neural. The goal of this work is to achieve the stability and to improve the vehicle dynamic’s performance through achieving the desired yaw rate and reducing the lateral velocity of the vehicle in a minimum time period for preventing the vehicle from slipping out the road curvature by using two active control actions: the front steering angle and the brake steering force. Bacterial forging optimization algorithm is used to adjust the parameters weights of the proposed controller. Simulation resul

In this paper, a cognitive system based on a nonlinear neural controller and intelligent algorithm that will guide an autonomous mobile robot during continuous path-tracking and navigate over solid obstacles with avoidance was proposed. The goal of the proposed structure is to plan and track the reference path equation for the autonomous mobile robot in the mining environment to avoid the obstacles and reach to the target position by using intelligent optimization algorithms. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) Algorithms are used to finding the solutions of the mobile robot navigation problems in the mine by searching the optimal paths and finding the reference path equation of the optimal

Due to the urgent need to develop technologies for continuous glucose monitoring in diabetes individuals, poten tial research has been applied by invoking the microwave tech niques. Therefore, this work presents a novel technique based on a single port microwave circuit, antenna structure, based on Metamaterial (MTM) transmission line defected patch for sensing the blood glucose level in noninvasive process. For that, the proposed antenna is invoked to measure the blood glu cose through the field leakages penetrated to the human blood through the skin. The proposed sensor is constructed from a closed loop connected to an interdigital capacitor to magnify the electric field fringing at the patch center. The proposed an tenna sensor i

The importance of the research lies in preparing exercises using a proposed device to learn the skill of thehuman wheel on a machine rug of ground movements of the artistic gymnastics. As for the research problem:Through the presence of the two researchers as teachers and observers of this sport in the gymnastics hall,they noticed that there is difficulty in the students’ performance of the skill of the round off on the machineof the mat of ground movements, according to the researchers’ opinion, the reason for this is that skillsare taught with the limited availability of assistive devices, as well as the lack of use of these devices inexercises according to biomechanical variables, although they facilitate the learning process

Babesiosis is a tick-borne disease caused by Babesia microti. We present a case of false positive HIV in the setting of confirmed babesiosis infection. An understanding that patients with babesiosis can have a false positive HIV test result is important in management decisions.