A Life Prediction Model of Multilayered PTH Based on Fatigue Mechanism.

Plated through hole (PTH) plays a critical role in printed circuit board (PCB) reliability. Thermal fatigue deformation of the PTH material is regarded as the primary factor affecting the lifetime of electrical devices. Numerous research efforts have focused on the failure mechanism model of PTH. However, most of the existing models were based on the one-dimensional structure hypothesis without taking the multilayered structure and external pad into consideration. In this paper, the constitutive relation of multilayered PTH is developed to establish the stress equation, and finite element analysis (FEA) is performed to locate the maximum stress and simulate the influence of the material properties. Finally, thermal cycle tests are conducted to verify the accuracy of the life prediction results. This model could be used in fatigue failure portable diagnosis and for life prediction of multilayered PCB

Development Program to Estimate the Suitable of Raw Materials to Produce Cement

Raw material composition plays an essential role on the lining life of cement rotary kiln.They are obtained from hard rock quarries that represent the first step in the cement manufacturing process. That raw materials are transported to Al- Kufa cement plant then crushed and ground to very fine powder and then blended in the correct proportions.This research aims to study suitable rations of raw materials to produce cement in al Kufa cement plant in Iraq. Through a software program, suitale raw materials ratios for the clinker were estimated, then chemical and physical tests for clinker and cement according to Iraqi Standard Specification were done to recognize the effects on the properties of cement such as the ratios of major and minor oxides, Lime saturations factor (LSF), Silica Modulus (SM) Alumina Modulus (AM), compressive strength, setting time and soundness. Keywords: Portland Cement, Raw material, Cement industry, Rotary kiln and Factors Affective of clinker DOI: 10.7176/CER/11-1-0

Novel Video Completion Approaches and Their Applications

Video completion refers to automatically restoring damaged or removed objects in a video sequence, with applications ranging from sophisticated video removal of undesired static or dynamic objects to correction of missing or corrupted video frames in old movies and synthesis of new video frames to add, modify, or generate a new visual story. The video completion problem can be solved using texture synthesis and/or data interpolation to fill-in the holes of the sequence inward. This thesis makes a distinction between still image completion and video completion. The latter requires visually pleasing consistency by taking into account the temporal information. Based on their applied concepts, video completion techniques are categorized as inpainting and texture synthesis. We present a bandlet transform-based technique for each of these categories of video completion techniques. The proposed inpainting-based technique is a 3D volume regularization scheme that takes advantage of bandlet bases for exploiting the anisotropic regularities to reconstruct a damaged video. The proposed exemplar-based approach, on the other hand, performs video completion using a precise patch fusion in the bandlet domain instead of patch replacement. The video completion task is extended to two important applications in video restoration. First, we develop an automatic video text detection and removal that benefits from the proposed inpainting scheme and a novel video text detector. Second, we propose a novel video super-resolution technique that employs the inpainting algorithm spatially in conjunction with an effective structure tensor, generated using bandlet geometry. The experimental results show a good performance of the proposed video inpainting method and demonstrate the effectiveness of bandlets in video completion tasks. The proposed video text detector and the video super resolution scheme also show a high performance in comparison with existing methods

Effect of Fiber Reinforcement on CBR Behavior of Lime Blended Expansive Soils: Reliability Approach

Use of synthetic fibers as reinforcement to stabilize expansive soils is gaining momentum. As a contribution towards this growing field of research two different types of synthetic fibers, Fiber Mesh® and Fiber Cast®, were evaluated as a stabilization alternative for expansive soils in the presence of lime. California Bearing Ratio (CBR) is chosen as a performance indicator as it is a good pointer towards pavement effectiveness. Variables such as length and amount of the fibers as well as curing period were studied. Both deterministic and probabilistic (or reliability) analysis is presented in this paper. While the deterministic analysis helps in understanding the measured experimental data, the probabilistic approach accounts for the stochastic nature of the experimental data and provides a better rationale for the design methods. The deterministic approach showed that the improvement in CBR increased with higher fiber contents and longer lengths and the effect was prominent when lime was used as a stabilizer. There were some exceptions to this behavior, which were noted in the paper. The probabilistic analysis showed that the amount and lengths of fibers were important factors in CBR strength. It was also determined that the variation in the target CBR value had considerable effect on optimizing the length and amount of the fibers

Nurses Practices Regarding Health and Safety Toward Psychiatric Patients in Hawler Psychiatric Hospital

الخلفية والهداف: الصحة النفسية وصحة المريض تعتبر ضرورية في المستشفى وفي الواقع الصحي والممرضيين يجب عليهم الادراك لهذا في عملهم لهذا الموضوع  ويجب ان تكون الصحة النفسية من متطلبات الرعاية التمريضية في كافة المجالات والممرضيين يدركون ان المشاكل النفسية هي من الامور المهمة في رعاية المريض للحفاظ على صحته من خلال العلاج الجيد واحترام تقرير مصير المريض وتجنب الاكراه وتهدف الدراسة الى تقييم سلامة المريض في مستشفى هولير الطبية للامراض النفسية  في اربيل وايجاد العلاقة بين بعض المتغيرات الديغرافية للممرضيين وبين عملهم فيما يخص سلامة المريض. طريقة العمل: اجريت دراسة مقطعية لثلاث وثلاثون ممرض من العاملين في مستشفى هولير الطبية في مدينة  اربيل وصممت اسئلة استبيانية لهذا الغرض وجمعت المعلومات من خلال المحاورة مع الممرضين واستخدم التكرار ومربع كاي لتحليل المعلومات. النتائج:  45.5% من المشتركين كانت نسبة اعمارهم من 38-50 سنة وكانوا يسكنون في المدن و 42.4% منهم كانوا من خريجي الاعداديات وكان دخلهم الاقتصادي كافي 78.8% وكانوا اغلبهم متزوجين 90.% وكانت نسبة الخدمات الاجمالية المقدمة بالنسبة لسلامة المريض هي 81.8% ونسبة سلامة المريض فيما يخص بيئة العمل كانت ضعيفة  84.4% اما العلاقة بين المتغيرات الديموغرافية وسلامة المريض فكانت هنالك علاقة ايجابية بين مستوى التعليم والحالة الاقتصادية تحت مستوى معنوي 0.007 و  .0.005  الخلاصة: النسبة الاجمالية لسلامة المريض وممارسة الممرضين كانت متوسطة بينما كانت صحة بيئة العمل ضعيفة في مستشفى هولير الطبية في اربيل لذلك فان التعليم المستمر للمرضيين حول سلامة المريض وبيئته ضرورية ويجب توفير كافة الاحتياجات للحصول على سلامة بيئة العمل.Background and objective: Mental health and patient safety is necessary in hospitals and health care settings .Nurses should know perception of patient safety in their field so patient safety includes everyone in all aspects of health care. Nurses understood patient safety as taking care of patient with psychiatric problems and maintain health through good treatment and respecting self-determination and avoiding coercion. The aims of this study were to assess the patient safety in Hawler psychiatry hospital/Erbil city and find out the association between demographic characteristics of the nurses and their roles regarding patient safety. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 33 nurses in Hawler psychiatry hospital/Erbil city. A questionnaire was designed for the purpose of the study. Data were collected through interview with nurses. Frequency and Chi-square test was used for data analysis. Results: 45.5 % of participants were in the age group 38-50 years old. Majority (69.7%) of them were male, 78.8 % from urban areas, 42.4 % of them were Preparatory School of nursing graduated, had income was somehow sufficient (78.8 %), married (90.9%). The overall nurse practice regarding patient safety was 81.8 was moderate, the overall patient safety related to environment of psychiatric hospital as estimated 84.8 % was poor. Regarding overall nursing practice related to patient safety and socio-demographic data of nurses, there were statistically significant differences between level of education of nurses (p-value=0.007) and level of economic status of nurses (p-value= 0.005) with patient safety. Conclusion: The overall practice regarding patient safety was moderate, and the overall nurse practice regarding patient safety was poor in Hawler psychiatric hospital ,so continuous education the nurses regarding patients’ safety and provide all equipment’s that needed for provide proper environment are necessary

In vitro evaluation of antiviral activity of essential oil from <em>Zataria multiflora</em> Boiss. against Newcastle disease virus

Introduction: The study aimed to investigate the antiviral activity of Zataria multiflora (ZM) essential oil against Newcastle disease virus (NDV) on Vero cells. Methods: The cytotoxicity of ZM essential oil was evaluated by MTT assay. Cells were infected with 100 TCID50 of a field isolate of virulent NDV (JF820294.1). ZM essential oil at concentrations of 1/5000, 1/25 000, 1/125 000 or 1/625 000 was added at different times of infection: 60 minutes pre infection, simultaneously and 60 minutes post infection. Cells were evaluated morphologically. The TCID50, neutralizing index (NI) and HA titer were determined. Results: Cells treated with ZM essential oil in all concentrations 1 hour before or after infection, showed CPE similar to control virus cells. In simultaneous use, cells treated with 1/5000 concentration of the essential oil, remained morphologically normal. TCID50 values of all treatments were very close to that of control virus except for simultaneous administration at concentration of 1/5000 which was about 1000 folds lower. Virus titer in different treatments was exactly the same as control virus titer in Haemagglutination (HA) test. Conclusion: ZM essential oil has some antiviral activity on NDV in vitro, which is possibly by destruction of virus infectivity or inhibition of early phases of viral proliferation cycle.</p

Identification of Candidate miRNAs and Predication of Their Role in Keratoconus

Keratoconus (KTCN, OMIM 148300) is known as an eye degenerative disease leading to stromal thinning and conical shape of the cornea. These structural changes can be accompanied by loss of visual function in advanced cases. To date, in spite of recent advances in the investigation of molecular mechanisms which result in Keratoconus, there’s still a lack of information about the role of miRNAs in this disorder. Accordingly, this study aims to find miRNA’s aberrantly expression in KTCN suffering cases and to predict their role by investigating their possible interactions with significantly KTCN correlated genes. The data were comprised of 25 normal and 25 KTCN cases. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis approach was used to construct a protein-coding gene co-expression network and investigate the significant modules. Gene with the higher module membership (MM) and gene significance (GS) in the selected modules were supposed to be more KTCN relevant genes.&nbsp; Totally 2492 protein-coding genes (PCGs) and 99 miRNAs were up-regulated and 213 PCGs and 31 miRNAs were down-regulated. Significant correlation with the KTCN was observed in three modules, including brown, green-yellow, and salmon from the total of 15 modules. Genes in significant modules have been enriched to gene expression regulation related biological processes such as negative regulation of protein secretion, intra-Golgi vesicle-mediated transport, regulation of mRNA 3’-end processing, and cytoskeleton related gene ontologies such as modulation of the mitochondrial cytoskeleton. Up-regulated miRNAs that interact with down-regulated mRNAs within significant modules include miR-1305, miR-544a, miR-1245a, miR-4635, miR-4266

The progressive collapse behavior of precast floor-to-floor connections using longitudinal and transverse ties

This paper involves a fundamental study of a numerical method for progressive collapse resistance design of floor-to-floor joints in precast cross-wall structures. It presents a 3D numerical study of a floor-to-floor system with longitudinal and transverse ties. The model is also used to derive the post-bond behavior and the mechanism of forming catenary action concerning the bond behavior in precast cross-wall structures. The obtained results indicated the adequacy and applicability of the code specifications in British Standard, Euro Codes, and DoD 2013. Discrepancies in the tie-force between the numerical results and codified specifications have suggested an inappropriate use of the current TF method, hence, an improved model based on the numerical results has been proposed to address this concern. To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first numerical study to investigate the behavior of floor-to-floor joints following the removal of wall support in typical precast cross-wall structures when considering bar fracture and pull-out failure mode

Assessment of an Unshielded Electron Field Diode Dosimeter for Beam Scanning in Small-to Medium-Sized 6 MV Photon Fields

Abstract Introduction Radiotherapy planning systems require many percentage depth dose (PDD) and profile measurements and there are various dosimeters that can be used to obtain these scans. As dose perturbation is particularly troublesome in smaller photon fields, using a low-perturbation, unshielded electron field diode (EFD) in these fields is of interest. The aim of this work was to investigate the suitability of an unshielded diode for beam scanning in 3×3 cm 2 , 5×5 cm 2 , and 10×10 cm 2 , 6 MV fields. Materials and Methods An EFD was used for all the scans. For comparison, in profile measurements, a tungsten-shielded photon field diode (PFD) was also used. PDDs were measured using the PFD and an RK ionization chamber. Results Very good agreement (0.4%) was found between the PDDs measured with EFD and PFD for the two larger fields. However, the difference between them exceeded 1.0% slightly for the smallest field, which may be attributed to the effect of the larger PFD perturbation. The RK chamber PDDs around 10 cm depth were 1-2% lower than those measured with the diodes. There was good agreement (&lt;1 mm) between EFD-and PFD-measured penumbra widths. Conclusion The EFD generally agrees well with the PFD and may even perform better in smaller fields