Comparison of Single and Group Jet Grouting Columns Capacity Based on Field Load Test and Theoretical Methods

The evaluation of axial capacity of jet grouted soil cement columns in soft soil is a complicated issue because it depends according to the number of factors such as, soil type, influence mixture between soil and grouting materials, nozzle jet energy, jet grouting and water flow rate, rotation and lifting speed. These parameters related to the type of jet grouting methods (single, double and triple system). Most methods of design the bearing capacity of the jet-grouting column based on experience. Therefore, some designer calculates the bearing capacity of the jet grouting column based on jet grout section capacity. In this paper, different theoretical methods have been used to estimate of the jet grouting soil-cement capacity, such as Poulos and Davis, 1980 methods and then their comparison with the pile load test calculations based on the quick pile load test as presented in ASTM-D1143-07.  Therefore, the study describes a prototype test single and group jet grout soil-cement models of arrangement (1*1, 1*2 and 2*2) for total length to diameter ratios (L/D) is 13.33 and clear spacing three times of diameter has been constructed in soft clayey soils in the right bank of the Euphrates River, at Al- Nasiriyah city. As a result, the theoretical method for estimation the bearing capacity gives unfaithful values for the single and group jet grout column compared to the load- settlement calculations obtained from field pile load test data. On the other hand, the Hansen’s 90% and Butler and Hoy’s given closer results to each other and may be considered faithful interpretation methods to compute the bearing capacity of single and group jet grouting columns

Simulated Effect of Carbon Black on High Speed Laser Transmission Welding of Polypropylene With Low Line Energy

Laser welding is an important manufacturing tool for a wide variety of polymer products including consumer goods, automotive components and medical devices. The laser process parameters and polymer properties have a significant impact on weld quality. Due to higher heat density generated by the laser transmission welding (LTW) technique, defining a set of suitable parameters for LTW of thermoplastics and composites can be challenging. In this work the effect of carbon black along other control parameters has been investigated for high speed welding using a laser source of 980 nm wavelength with low line energy. In this work, the finite element method (FEM)-based software COMSOL Multiphysics is used to create a 3D transient thermal model for LTW of isotactic polypropylene (iPP) and its composites with carbon black (CB) of concentrations ranging from 0.5 wt% to 1.5 wt%. The design of experiments based on Box-Behnken design (BBD) is used to organize the simulation experiments and mathematical models are developed based on multiple curvilinear regression analysis on the simulation findings. Independent control variables include the laser power, welding speed, beam diameter, and carbon black content in the absorbent polymer. The maximum weld temperature, weld width, and weld depth within the transmissive and absorptive layers are considered as dependent response variables. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is carried out to investigate the impact of carbon black along with other independent variables on the responses. The welding feasibility check was performed on the basis of melt and degradation temperature of the materials, and weld depths of transmissive and absorptive layers. It has been observed that the composites containing 0.5 wt% and 1 wt% of CB can be welded successfully with neat iPP. However, due to a degradation temperature problem, composites having a larger proportion of CB (>1 wt%) appear to be more difficult to weld

Association of Cigarette Smoking with Thickness of Intimal Layer of Carotid Arteries on Color Doppler Ultrasound Study and Its Surgical Management

Objectives:  Aim of this study is to evaluate the intimal vessel wall thickness in smoker and their co-relation with non-smoker and also surgical management of stenosis. Material and Methods:  It is a prospective study of 55 cases. Study span and follow up duration were 4 months. Our patients were presented with the history of CVA (Cerebrovascular accident), hypertension, diabetes, and headache. Results:  In all patients, the carotid doppler ultrasound was done and their intimal vessel wall thickness was noted. Our 78% patients were smoker and non-smoker was 22%. In our study, 52% patients had CVA, 41% patients had hypertension, 30% patients had headache and 9% patients were also obese. Forty three smokers used to take 15 – 25 cigarettes daily. Among 43 patients, 5 patients were females. In carotid Doppler study, intimal thickness was increased in 87%, the plaque was observed in 49% and stenosis was observed in 38% cases. In 18 % patients, who had stenosis > 70%, carotid endarterectomy was performed and in rest of the patients medical treatment done.Patients who were chronic smokers and had medical co-morbidities showed greater thickness of intimal layer of vessels on carotid Doppler. In 6 patients, post-operative headache occurred. Conclusion:  Smokers had more thickness of intimal layer of carotid vessels. Carotid endarterectomy yields good results in case of stenosis more than 70%. Keywords:  Cerebrovascular accident, Intimal layer thickness, Carotid doppler ultrasound, Cigarette smokin

Detection and Localization of Firearm Carriers in Complex Scenes for Improved Safety Measures

Detecting firearms and accurately localizing individuals carrying them in images or videos is of paramount importance in security, surveillance, and content customization. However, this task presents significant challenges in complex environments due to clutter and the diverse shapes of firearms. To address this problem, we propose a novel approach that leverages human-firearm interaction information, which provides valuable clues for localizing firearm carriers. Our approach incorporates an attention mechanism that effectively distinguishes humans and firearms from the background by focusing on relevant areas. Additionally, we introduce a saliency-driven locality-preserving constraint to learn essential features while preserving foreground information in the input image. By combining these components, our approach achieves exceptional results on a newly proposed dataset. To handle inputs of varying sizes, we pass paired human-firearm instances with attention masks as channels through a deep network for feature computation, utilizing an adaptive average pooling layer. We extensively evaluate our approach against existing methods in human-object interaction detection and achieve significant results (AP=77.8\%) compared to the baseline approach (AP=63.1\%). This demonstrates the effectiveness of leveraging attention mechanisms and saliency-driven locality preservation for accurate human-firearm interaction detection. Our findings contribute to advancing the fields of security and surveillance, enabling more efficient firearm localization and identification in diverse scenarios.Comment: This paper is accepted in IEEE Transactions on Computational Social System

A Novel Splice-Site Variant in CACNA1F Causes a Phenotype Synonymous with Åland Island Eye Disease and Incomplete Congenital Stationary Night Blindness

Background: CACNA1F-related disorders encompass progressive and non-progressive disorders, including Åland island eye disease and incomplete congenital stationary night blindness. These two X-linked disorders are characterized by nystagmus, color vision defect, myopia, and electroretinography (ERG) abnormalities. Ocular hypopigmentation and iris transillumination are reported only in patients with Åland island eye disease. Around 260 variants were reported to be associated with these two non-progressive disorders, with 19 specific to Åland island eye disease and 14 associated with both Åland island eye disease and incomplete congenital stationary night blindness. CACNA1F variants spread on the gene and further analysis are needed to reveal phenotype-genotype correlation. Case Report: A complete ocular exam and genetic testing were performed on a 13-year-old boy. A novel splice-site variant, c.4294-11C>G in intron 36 in CACNA1F, was identified at hemizygous state in the patient and at heterozygous state in his asymptomatic mother and explained the phenotype synonymous with Åland island eye disease and incomplete congenital stationary night blindness observed in the patient. Conclusion: We present a novel variant in the CACNA1F gene causing phenotypic and electrophysiologic findings indistinguishable from those of AIED/CSNB2A disease. This finding further expands the mutational spectrum and our knowledge of CACNA1F-related disease

Effect of incorporation POFA in cement mortar and desired benefits: a review

Palm oil fuel ash (POFA) is a by-product waste material more economical and environmentally friendly, resulted from production palm oil products. Lack of enough information on the advantages of POFA in the concrete production in various proportions was the main cause to select this work. This paper presents the advantages of POFA as a partial cement replacement in concrete production. This study recommends that researchers and academics should show more experimental works in order to illustrate the desired benefits from POFA as cement replacement, thus mitigate of environmental impacts

Fabrication, physicochemical characterization and preliminary efficacy evaluation of a W/O/W multiple emulsion loaded with 5% green tea extract

Emulsões múltiplas complexas possuem excelente habilidade de agregar grandes quantidades de agentes cosméticos funcionais. Este estudo teve por objetivo encapsular grandes volumes de chá verde em uma emulsão múltipla clássica e comparar sua estabilidade com a emulsão múltipla sem o extrato do chá verde. Emulsões múltiplas são desenvolvidas usando cetil dimeticona copoliol como emulsificante lipofílico e o clássico polissorbato-80 como emulsificante hidrofílico. As emulsões múltiplas foram avaliadas por meio de vários aspectos fisico-químicos como condutividade, pH, análise microscópica e reologia. Estas características foram observadas por um período de 30 dias sob diferentes condições de armazenamento. Testes de proteção da pele in vivo e in vitro foram realizados para ambos os tipos de emulsões testadas, i.e. com o ativo em estudo (MeA) e sem ativo (MeB). Ambas as formulações apresentaram características comparáveis no que diz respeito aos diferentes fatores físico-químicos avaliados sob diferentes condições de armazenamento. A análise reológica mostrou que as formulações apresentaram comportamento pseudo-plástico sob contínuo estresse de cisalhamento. Os resultados dos testes in vivo e in vitro sobre a proteção da pele revelaram que a formulação ativa promoveu efeitos comparáveis à formulação controle. Nossos dados mostraram que emulsões múltiplas estáveis poderiam ser escolhas promissoras para a aplicação tópica do chá verde. Entretanto, a fórmula das emulsões múltiplas apresentadas neste estudo precisam ser melhoradas no que diz respeito ao pH, condutividade e viscosidade aparente.Complex multiple emulsions have an excellent ability to fill large volumes of functional cosmetic agents. This study was aimed to encapsulate large volume of green tea in classical multiple emulsion and to compare its stability with a multiple emulsion without green tea extract. Multiple emulsions were developed using Cetyl dimethicone copolyol as lipophilic emulsifier and classic polysorbate-80 as hydrophilic emulsifier. Multiple emulsions were evaluated for various physicochemical aspects like conductivity, pH, microscopic analysis, rheology and these characteristics were followed for a period of 30 days in different storage conditions. In vitro and in vivo skin protection tests were also performed for both kinds of multiple emulsions i.e. with active (MeA) and without active (MeB). Both formulations showed comparable characteristics regarding various physicochemical characteristics in different storage conditions. Rheological analysis showed that formulations showed pseudo plastic behavior upon continuous shear stress. Results of in vitro and in vivo skin protection data have revealed that the active formulation has comparable skin protection effects to that of control formulation. It was presumed that stable multiple emulsions could be a promising choice for topical application of green tea but multiple emulsions presented in this study need improvement in the formula, concluded on the basis of pH, conductivity and apparent viscosity data

Impact of Non-Linear Electronic Circuits and Switch of Chaotic Dynamics

Switch-mode power supply is an extremely non-linear system that can inevitably exhibit unpredictable behavior. These control laws may be insufficient for nonlinear systems because they are not robust when the requirements on the dynamic characteristics of the system are strict [10]. Control laws that are insensitive to parameter variations, disturbances, and nonlinearities must be used. In this paper, we have tested the method of the first harmonic, used to analyses servo controls with a nonlinear element, and to predict certain non-linear behaviors. It mainly allows predicting the limit cycles, but also the jump phenomena, the harmonics as well as the responses of non-linear systems to sinusoidal inputs. We apply this method for the prediction of limit cycles and the determination of their amplitude and frequency. We take as an example a Boost converter controlled by current [4]. This system is chaotic when the duty cycle is more significant than 0.5: we then eliminate the chaos by applying the slippery mode command (for the ripple of the output voltage, for the current ripple of the inductance and switching frequency) when the output is periodic (duty cycle less than or equal to 0.5). In this article, we assess that established approach provides the best outcomes: it appears that the preference between the classical mode and the sliding mode depends heavily on the variance domain of the parameters E, R, and Iref