Behavior of Beam to Column Cold-Formed Section Connections Subjected to Bending Moments

Cold formed sections are often used in the construction of mid-rise buildings due to their high strength weight ratios, and fast erection. In these buildings, the connections between joists and studs are mainly simple connections. However, application of these sections can be extended to moderate span frames where connections between members are subjected to bending moments. Strength and stability of such frames depends to large extent on the behaviour of the connections between their members. Over the last twenty years, several researchers undertake tests on cold formed section connections subjected to bending moments. Major of them classify the connections as semi-rigid, but some suggested that as we reach the maximum capacity of the connected sections so we can consider it rigid

Ameliorative Effect of Mesenchymal Stromal Cells on Diabetic Nephropathy in Male Rats

Both types of diabetes mellitus (DM) are recognized by the destruction of pancreas or deficient function of Islets’ cells causing several complications. Diabetes mainly affect the kidney leading to diabetic nephropathy (DN) in the late renal stage, which caused higher mortality in diabetic patients. Since diabetic disease appearance, nephropathy may be observed in patients with type 1 or 2 diabetes. Recently, cell culture can be used in the regenerative medicine as a new method for treating diabetes and DN. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to prove the beneficial effect of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) transplantation on DN during the early stage. Male rats were randomized in 3 groups (each 20 rats): the 1st group was normal rats, while the 2nd was streptozotocin (STZ) diabetic rats and the 3rd was diabetic rats treated with a single intravenous dose of bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells (BM-MSCs) after 3 days from STZ induction. Results indicated that STZ induced DN represented by weight loss, hyperglycemia, hypoinsulineamia, decreased glycated hemoglobin, leukocytosis and impairment of kidney function and oxidative stress in kidney tissue. After BM-MSCs treatment, blood glucose level was improved, renal function was retained, body weight loss was decreased, insulin level and HBA1C percent were ameliorated with improved oxidative stress in kidney tissue. BM-MSCs have the capacity to regenerate and differentiate into insulin- producing cells improving DM and DN

IMPROVING TOLERABILITY OF TAXODIUM DISTICHUM SEEDLINGS TO WATER SALINITY AND IRRIGATION WATER DEFICIENCY II. EFFECT OF SALICYLIC ACID ON SALINITY STRESS

This study was carried out at the nursery of Horticulture Research Institute, Agriculture Research Center, Giza, Egypt in the two years, 2016 and 2017, aiming to investigate the effect of salicylic acid at different level (0, 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 g/l) on growth and chemical composition of Taxodium distichum under salinity stress at four concentrations (0, 4, 6 and 8 g/l NaCl). The results revealed that, salinity levels significantly decreased growth parameters, i.e. seedlings height, branches number, root length and shoot, root fresh and dry weight. Also salinity decreased total carbohydrate content and total chlorophyll content in leaves. Salicylic acid application significantly increased growth parameters under salinity stress as compared with salinity treatment without salicylic acid application. Application of 0.5 g/l salicylic acid recorded the best results. Also, combinations that occupied the highest position were: salicylic acid at 0.5 g/l with salinity at 4 and 6 g/l for shoot dry weight and root fresh weight; salicylic acid at 0.5 g/l with salinity at 0 g/l for branch number, root length; salicylic acid at 0.5 g/l with salinity at 4 g/l for plant height 2nd year, root dry weight and total chlorophyll content; salicylic acid at 0.5 g/l with salinity at 6 g/l for plant height in the 1st year and root dry weight; salicylic acid at 1.0 g/l with salinity at 0 g/l for branch number in the 1st  and 2nd years and shoot fresh weight; in addition to salicylic acid at 1.0 g/l with salinity at 4 g/l, salicylic acid at 1.5 g/l with salinity at 0 g/l and salicylic acid at 1.5 g/l with salinity at 4 g/l for shoot fresh weight. Combinations that obtained the lowest grade were: salicylic acid at 0 g/l with salinity at 8 g/l for root length, root fresh weight, root dry weight, total carbohydrate content and, total chlorophyll content. It is recommended to in case of irrigation water or soils afflicted with salinity, it is advised to apply salicylic acid at 0.5 - 1.5 g/l as to alleviate salinity stress. So that it could be concluded that the addition of 0.5-1.5g/l of salicylic acid are beneficial to mitigate the adverse effects of salinity stress of T. distichum seedlings

IMPROVING TOLERABILITY OF TAXODIUM DISTICHUM SEEDLINGS TO WATER SALINITY AND IRRIGATION WATER DEFICIENCY I. EFFECT OF SALICYLIC ACID ON WATER STRESS

This study was carried out at the nursery of Horticulture Research Institute, Giza, Egypt in the two seasons, 2016 and 2017, aiming to investigate the effect of salicylic acid at different level (0, 0.5, and 1.0 g/l) with different levels of field capacity (25,50,75 and 100%) on growth and chemical constituents of Taxodium distichum and also to reduce the amount of water needed for irrigation. Main results of this study could be summarized as follows: The highest value was achieved by the following treatments: salicylic acid at 0 g/l with100% of field capacity level (concerning root fresh and dry weights); salicylic acid at 0.5 g/l with 75% of field capacity level(for plant height, branch number, shoot dry weight, root fresh and dry weights); salicylic acid  at 0.5 g/l with 100% of field capacity level (regarding plant height, branch number and root length); salicylic acid at1.0 g/l with 75% of field capacity level (for plant height, root length and root fresh weight); and salicylic acid at 1.0 g/l with 100% of field capacity level (for shoot fresh weight, total carbohydrate and total chlorophyll). The lowest value was obtained by the following treatments: salicylic acid 0 g/l with 25% of  field capacity level (for plant height, branch number, shoot fresh and dry weights, root fresh weight, total carbohydrate and total chlorophyll); salicylic acid at 0 g/l with 50% of field capacity level (for plant height and shoot dry weight); salicylic acid at 0.5 g/l with 25% of field capacity level and salicylic acid at 0.5 g/l with 50% of field capacity level (for root fresh weight); salicylic acid at 0.5 g/l with 100% of field capacity level  (for root dry weight); salicylic acid  at 1.0 g/l with 25% of field capacity level (for root length and shoot dry weight); and salicylic acid at 1.0 g/l with 50% of field capacity level (for shoot dry weight). It is recommended to treat plants with salicylic acid at 0.5 g/l and to apply irrigation at 75% of field capacity level capacity to obtain the highest values of plant height, branch number, shoot dry weight, root fresh and dry weights. This will also save as much water as 25% of field capacity level

Minimizing labeling ambiguity during classification process of the geological units covering the central part of the Suez Canal Corridor, Egypt using their radar scattering response

Deriving information about the geometrical and dielectrical characteristics of objects using optical and radar satellite sensors is valuable for delineating and classifying surficial sediments. In the present study, unsupervised and supervised classifications of the Landsat-8 and the full-polarimetric Radarsat-2 data were used to map the different geological units and to reduce labeling ambiguity during classification processes. The study covers the central part of the Suez Canal Corridor in northeast Egypt. The full-polarimetric Radarsat-2 image was decomposed, filtered and geo-referenced to extract the scattering response of the different land cover and geological units covering the study area. In addition, polarimetric target decomposition and Wishart unsupervised classification with 5 classes were performed. The extracted polarization signatures show significant correlation with the obtained classes in terms of their geometrical (surface roughness) and dielectrical (mineral composition) characteristics. These characteristics are related to physical properties and to some extent, to the grain size and degree of weathering. The results show that the integration between the radar scattering responses and the optical reflectance information of the classified land cover and rock units is appropriate for precise objects discrimination. Keywords: Radarsat-2, Full-polarimetric SAR, Landsat-8, Scattering response, Classifications, Geological mappin

RegionInpaint, Cutoff and RegionMix: Introducing Novel Augmentation Techniques for Enhancing the Generalization of Brain Tumor Identification

Brain tumors are considered one of the most crucial and threatening diseases in the world as they affect the central nervous system and the main functionalities of the brain. Early diagnosis and identification of brain tumors can significantly enhance the likelihood of patient survival. Generally, deep neural networks require large samples of annotated data to achieve promising results. Most studies in the medical domain suffer from limited data which negatively impacts the model performance. Common ways to handle such problems are to generate new samples using basic augmentation techniques, generative adversarial networks, etc. In this study, we propose several novel augmentation techniques, named RegionInpaint augmentation, Cutoff augmentation, and RegionMix augmentation to improve the performance of brain tumor identification and facilitate the training of deep learning models with limited samples. In addition, traditional augmentation techniques are used to extend the training samples. A pre-trained VGG19 model is experimented along with the proposed augmentation techniques and achieved an accuracy of 100% on the unseen validation set of the SPMRI small dataset using RegionInpaint and Cutoff augmentation techniques together. On the other hand, the best testing accuracy achieved is 96.88% on the Br35H dataset which is obtained when using all the augmentation techniques together (i.e., RegionInpaint, Cutoff, RegionMix, and Basic augmentation techniques). Compared to the state-of-the-art related studies, it has been observed that our results are superior which demonstrates the efficiency of our proposed augmentation techniques and the overall proposed methodology. The source code is available at https://github.com/omarsherif200/RegionInpaint-Cutoff-and-RegionMix-augmentation-techniques

Field assessment of surge and continuous furrow irrigation methods in relation to tillage systems

Surge flow irrigation is one of the irrigation techniques for controlling furrow irrigation. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of surge furrow irrigation on water management compared with continuous irrigation for different tillage systems. An experimental field was treated with various tillage systems (mouldboard plough, chisel plough and rotary plough) and water irrigation application methods (continuous flow, control) in which irrigation water was applied continuously, and surge flow (3-surges, 4-surges and 5-surges) in which irrigation water was applied intermittently until it reached the tail end of the furrow. The results showed that water savings obtained using the surge technique were 18.58, 11.84 and 18.93% lower water use than with continuous flow, for the mouldboard, chisel and rotary ploughs, respectively. The 3-surges treatment with the rotary plough reduced the advance time by 25.36% from that for continuous irrigation. The 4-surges treatment with the mouldboard plough had the highest water application efficiency (88.13%). The 3-surges treatment with the rotary plough had the highest distribution uniformity (85.01%). The rotary plough did not cause as much soil aeration around the root system as the other tillage systems. The field research provided information about surge flow, aimed at reducing advance times and increasing irrigation efficiency

Field assessment of surge and continuous furrow irrigation methods in relation to tillage systems

Surge flow irrigation is one of the irrigation techniques for controlling furrow irrigation. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of surge furrow irrigation on water management compared with continuous irrigation for different tillage systems. An experimental field was treated with various tillage systems (mouldboard plough, chisel plough and rotary plough) and water irrigation application methods (continuous flow, control) in which irrigation water was applied continuously, and surge flow (3-surges, 4-surges and 5-surges) in which irrigation water was applied intermittently until it reached the tail end of the furrow. The results showed that water savings obtained using the surge technique were 18.58, 11.84 and 18.93% lower water use than with continuous flow, for the mouldboard, chisel and rotary ploughs, respectively. The 3-surges treatment with the rotary plough reduced the advance time by 25.36% from that for continuous irrigation. The 4-surges treatment with the mouldboard plough had the highest water application efficiency (88.13%). The 3-surges treatment with the rotary plough had the highest distribution uniformity (85.01%). The rotary plough did not cause as much soil aeration around the root system as the other tillage systems. The field research provided information about surge flow, aimed at reducing advance times and increasing irrigation efficiency