Influence of horizontal restraints on the behaviour of concrete slabs

Investigates the influence of horozontal restraints on the behaviour of concrete slabs subjected to central concentrated loads

Sexual behaviour of pregnant women attending antenatal care clinic at Assiut Women's Health Hospital, Egypt

Background: The aim of the current study was to describe the knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behavior of pregnant women regarding sexuality during pregnancy. Study was carried out at Women’s Health Hospital, Assiut University, Egypt.Methods: A cross-sectional study included pregnant women at different gestational ages between December 2016 and Jun 2017 recruited consecutively at the antenatal outpatient clinic of women’s Health Hospital at Assiut University. We used the Arabic version of the Female Sexual Function Index (Ar-FSFI) in the interview to evaluate the sexual functions or problems during the last month. The cut-off score used to indicate sexual dysfunction was 28.1. The obtained data were analyzed by means of SPSS software (version 22.0) and p<0.05 was taken as the significant level.Results: The study included 140 pregnant women at different ages and trimesters and also at different socio-economic states. Concerning the level of knowledge, the classification in recorded a mean score =11.91±4.05 which revealed a level of knowledge below average. Regarding the extent of beliefs in relation to sexuality during pregnancy, the mean score=2.72 of the respondents’ beliefs means that the impact of the beliefs regarding sexuality during pregnancy was weak among respondents. On assessing their perceptions about sexual intercourse during pregnancy, majority of them [130 (93.1%)] felt that sex have no negative impacts on pregnancy while 10 (6.9%) opined that sex during pregnancy had negative effects. Perceived negative effects of sex during pregnancy included vaginal bleeding and miscarriage.Conclusions: The low rate of sexual activity in our study, regardless question about the taboo of sexual intercourse during pregnancy, could be related to a cultural background in which women avoid speaking about their desires and sexual needs

Ecological Agro-ecosystem Sustainable Development in Relationship to Other Sectors in the Economic System, and Human Ecological Footprint and Imprint☆

Abstract Sustainable agriculture is the major economic sector (i.e. about 30% of Global economy) with the industrial and trading system in the world's economy. It is important to understand why the sustainable development is very important to the point of view of improving of human life and reducing the poverty. Additionally, we need to sustain our natural resources to be replenished and continue support our human population growth that is continued to increase in alarming rate rather than development, which is in a slow rate that does not meet the demands. This paper is to discuss the importance of global agro-ecosystems, to support humans' needs for feeding and continue their lives in a healthy and sustainable life and to function within the society. In addition, the paper will show the availability of the agriculture natural resources in terms of global ecological biological capacities in hectares and the trends in using these resources in terms of an ecological footprint in hectares. Additionally, we study the term of ecological human imprint in relation to the agro-ecosystem as suggested by Shakir Hanna et al., 2014 . Further the paper will address the impacts of agro-ecosystem on global economy and, further discuss the impacts of human technological advances on agro-ecosystems ecologically, economically, and social importance. Our results show that the global population will be 10.50 billion people in 2050 (i.e. 1.1% the current population growth). The available global cropped land is 2.36 billion global hectares in 2008.The question is the Earth able to provide food and other agricultural products to support the healthy living of all human beings in year 2050 at the current growth rate? The paper is discussing these concerns

Fraudulence Risk Strategic Assessment of Processed Meat Products

&nbsp;A total of 450 samples of different meat products (luncheon chicken, luncheon meat, sausage, beef burger, minced meat, and kofta) were examined. Fifty samples of each type of product were collected from different supermarkets in Assiut City. All of the samples were analysed by different microscopy techniques (light, fluorescence, histochemical microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM)) for the detection of meat adulteration. Haematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining was used for general histological examinations. Different histochemical techniques were used to stain paraffinised sections. The adulterated tissues detected were the nuchal ligament, large elastic blood vessels, muscular artery, elastic fibers, lung, cardiac muscle fibers, tendon, spongy bone, bone of immature animals, adipose tissue, cartilage (hyaline and white fibrocartilage), and smooth muscle of visceral organs. SEM detected contamination of the minced meat by bacteria and yeast. Fluorescence microscopy was used as an effective method for the detection of bone and cartilage. Interestingly, the stained acidophilic cytoplasm of skeletal muscle changed to basophilic, and the skeletal muscle was suspected to be diseased. The findings of the present work provide qualitative evaluations of the detection of unauthorised tissues in different meat products using different effective histological techniques

Phosphonated Lower-Molecular-Weight Polyethyleneimines as Oilfield Scale Inhibitors: An Experimental and Theoretical Study

For many years, amino methylenephosphonate (-CH2-N-PO3H2)-based scale inhibitors (SIs) have been deployed for preventing various scales in the oil and gas industry, particularly for squeeze treatment applications. However, this class of phosphonate inhibitors showed several limitations related to environmental concerns and compatibility with brine solutions. The low toxicity of low-molecular-weight polyethyleneimine (LMW-PEI) encouraged us to phosphonate a series of branched and linear PEIs via the Moedritzer–Irani reaction. The phosphonated polyethyleneimine PPEIs are branched PPEI-600, branched PPEI-1200, branched PPEI-2000, and linear PPEI-5000. The newly synthesized PPEIs (branched and linear) were screened for calcium carbonate and barium sulfate utilizing a high-pressure dynamic tube-blocking rig at 100 °C and 80 bar. Moreover, we report the compatibility activity of all PPEIs with various concentrations of calcium ions (up to 10000 ppm). The morphology of the calcium carbonate and barium sulfate scale crystals in the absence and presence of linear PPEI-5000 was also investigated under static conditions using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The obtained results showed that all branched and linear PPEIs gave moderate calcite and barite inhibition activities. It was also found that all branched PPEIs gave moderate to poor calcium compatibility at high dosages of calcium ions (1000–10 000 ppm). Interestingly, linear PPEI-5000 displayed superior compatibility properties at high dosages of SI (up to 50 000 ppm) and high concentrations of Ca2+ ions (up to 10 000 ppm). Furthermore, field emission scanning electron microscopy analysis confirmed that the crystal shapes of CaCO3 and BaSO4 mineral scales are greatly changed in the presence of linear PPEI-5000. At high dosages of linear PPEI-5000 SI (100 ppm), the CaCO3 crystals are completely converted from cubic-shaped blocks (blank calcite) into long cluster shapes. Density functional theory (DFT) simulations reveal favorable interactions of PPEI polymers with the two mineral facets (calcite and barite) with more affinity toward the calcite surface. PPEI with more phosphonate groups exhibits affinities comparable to the commercial-scale inhibitors. The high density of the phosphonate groups on the branched PPEI and its strong affinity toward calcium ions explain its poor calcium compatibility. The polymer flocculation and sluggish barite kinetics are the potential reasons for its low performance against thepublishedVersio

Developments in unsteady pipe flow friction modelling

This paper reviews a number of unsteady friction models for transient pipe flow. Two distinct unsteady friction models, the Zielke and the Brunone models, are investigated in detail. The Zielke model, originally developed for transient laminar flow, has been selected to verify its effectiveness for "low Reynolds number" transient turbulent flow. The Brunone model combines local inertia and wall friction unsteadiness. This model is verified using the Vardy's analytically deduced shear decay coefficient C* to predict the Brunone's friction coefficient k rather than use the traditional trial and error method for estimating k. The two unsteady friction models have been incorporated into the method of characteristics water hammer algorithm. Numerical results from the quasi-steady friction model and the Zielke and the Brunone unsteady friction models are compared with results of laboratory measurements for water hammer cases with laminar and low Reynolds number turbulent flows. Conclusions about the range of validity for the three friction models are drawn. In addition, the convergence and stability of these models are addressed.Anton Bergant, Angus Ross Simpson, John Vìtkovsk

Limits for Recombination in a Low Energy Loss Organic Heterojunction

Donor–acceptor organic solar cells often show high quantum yields for charge collection, but relatively low open-circuit voltages (V$_{OC}$) limit power conversion efficiencies to around 12%. We report here the behavior of a system, PIPCP:PC$_{61}$BM, that exhibits very low electronic disorder (Urbach energy less than 27 meV), very high carrier mobilities in the blend (field-effect mobility for holes >10$^{-2}$ cm$^{2}$ V$^{-1}$ s$^{-1}$), and a very low driving energy for initial charge separation (50 meV). These characteristics should give excellent performance, and indeed, the V$_{OC}$ is high relative to the donor energy gap. However, we find the overall performance is limited by recombination, with formation of lower-lying triplet excitons on the donor accounting for 90% of the recombination. We find this is a bimolecular process that happens on time scales as short as 100 ps. Thus, although the absence of disorder and the associated high carrier mobility speeds up charge diffusion and extraction at the electrodes, which we measure as early as 1 ns, this also speeds up the recombination channel, giving overall a modest quantum yield of around 60%. We discuss strategies to remove the triplet exciton recombination channel.SMM, RHF, MKR, SAA, and JLB acknowledge support from the KAUST Competitive Research Grant Program. MKR, SAA, and JLB also acknowledge generous support of their work by KAUST and the Office of Naval Research Global (Award N62909­15­1­2003); they thank the KAUST IT Research Computing Team and Supercomputing Laboratory for providing computational and storage resources. NAR, MW, TQN, and GCB acknowledge support from the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research (Award Nos. N00014-14-1-0580 and N00014-16-1-25200. AS would like to acknowledge the funding and support from the India-UK APEX project. HLS acknowledges support from the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability. MN and HS gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council though a Programme Grant (EP/M005141/1)