A steel-concrete composite structure (1) is described. The steel-concrete composite structure comprises a steel member (2) having an upper surface (5) and a plurality of shear connector elements (6) upstanding from the upper surface and a concrete slab (4) having upper and lower surfaces (7, 8). The slab is supported on its lower surface by the upper surface of the steel member. The slab comprises a plurality of through holes (9) between the upper and lower surfaces, each through hole tapering towards the lower surface so as to form an inverted frustally-shaped seating surface (10). The concrete slab is configured and positioned with respect to the steel member such that at least one shear connector element projects into each through hole.

Criticism is inherently impolite and a face-threatening act generally leading to conflicts among interlocutors. It is equally challenging for both native and non-native speakers, and needs pre-planning before performing it. The current research examines the production of non-institutional criticism by Iraqi EFL university learners and American native speakers. More specifically, it explores to what extent Iraqi EFL learners and American native speakers vary in (i) performing criticism, (ii) mitigating criticism, and (iii) their pragmatic choices according to the contextual variables of power and distance. To collect data, a discourse-completion task was used to elicit written data from 20 Iraqi EFL learners and 20 American native speaker

The electrical properties of the AlNiCo thin films with thickness (1000oA) deposited on glass substrates using Ion – Beam sputtering (IBS) technique under vacuum <10-6 torr have been studied . Also it studied the effect of annealing temperature from this films , It is found that the effective energy decrease with increase of temperature and the conductivity decrease with increase temperature 323oK but after this degree the conductivity increasing .

Burnishing improves fatigue strength, surface hardness and decrease surface roughness of metal because this process transforms tensile residual stresses into compressive residual stresses. Roller burnishing tool is used in the present work on low carbon steel (AISI 1008) specimens. In this work, different experiments were used to study the influence of feed parameter and speed parameter in burnishing process on fatigue strength, surface roughness and surface hardness of low carbon steel (AISI 1008) specimens. The first parameter used is feed values which were (0.6, 0.8, and 1) mm at constant speed (370) rpm, while the second parameter used is speed at values (540, 800 and 1200) rpm and at constant feed (1) mm. The results of the fatigue

Aspect categorisation and its utmost importance in the eld of Aspectbased Sentiment Analysis (ABSA) has encouraged researchers to improve topic model performance for modelling the aspects into categories. In general, a majority of its current methods implement parametric models requiring a pre-determined number of topics beforehand. However, this is not e ciently undertaken with unannotated text data as they lack any class label. Therefore, the current work presented a novel non-parametric model drawing a number of topics based on the semantic association present between opinion-targets (i.e., aspects) and their respective expressed sentiments. The model incorporated the Semantic Association Rules (SAR) into the Hierarchical Dirichlet Proce

Concrete structures are exposed to aggressive environmental conditions that lead to corrosion of the embedded reinforcement and pre-stressing steel. Consequently, the safety of concrete structures may be compromised, and this requires a significant budgets to repair and maintain critical infrastructure. Prediction of structural safety can lead to significant reductions in maintenance costs by maximizing the impact of investments. The aim of this paper is to establish a framework to assess the reliability of existing post-tensioned concrete bridges. A time-dependent reliability analysis of an existing post-tensioned involving the assessment of Ynys-y-Gwas bridge has been presented in this study. The main cause of failure of this bridge was c