CAMBER CONTROL IN SIMPLY SUPPORTED PRESTRESSED CONCRETE BRIDGE GIRDERS

When designing a bridge, serviceability usually controls and is a more important factor than the ultimate capacity of the bridge or the allowable stresses. Therefore, the behavior of the bridge girder deflection and camber must be predicted as accurately as possible. Therefore, excessive camber has become one of the most common problems when constructing concrete bridges. Different methods have been developed to overcome this problem. The most common and widely used is using haunch with adjustable pedestals to overcome the excessive camber. However, this method has limitations that must be considered. Therefore, this study is evaluating the effectiveness of using post tensioning jacking strands at the top flange of simply supported bridge girders to reduce the excessive camber and make it equal to the design camber

Changes in Aortic Vasa Vasorum Associated with Rabbits Hyperimmunization with Pseudomonas Aeruginosa

Aortic adventitial vasa vasorum (vv) is an essential network of microvesseles that participates in providing nutrient , oxygen , besides being a source of stem cell for neovascularization (vv) is involved in inflammatory response in atherosclerosis . Male rabbits were immunized with heat killed , Whole bacteria, rested for two weeks and aortic base region were processed for histological examination . In addition  the sex-steriods hormonal levle were estimated by ELISA . The results demonstrated that immunized rabbit showed prominent thickened tunica media with signs of smooth muscle cell proliferation . The most interesting findings included increased angiogenesis . Rabbits showing these changes demonstrated increased testosterone 5.77± 3.78 in test versus 1.25 ±  0.87 in control (P=0.089) . progesterone and estradiol didn’t show any changes in test animals . These results implicate that contineous exposure to bacterial constituents  could  induce atherosclerotic lesion in aorta vasa vasorum. Keywords:Vasa Vasorum (VV) , Immunization, Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Examining community of inquiry model in influencing e-learning usage among female students

The use of online social games, nowadays, is so rampant especially among students of higher learning. This provides them with means to interact with one another by sharing the same interests irrespective of locations. The use of online social games tools is noticed to be high among female students. Meanwhile, an e-learning environment that has the features of social network tools such as games has great potential to innovate and stimulate the continual usage of E-learning among students, by fostering social interaction and knowledge sharing among the students. E-learning is an important online tool that can be used to achieve quality of learning and teaching among students in higher education.It is thus pertinent for any online technological tools that will maintain efficient usage, especially among female students to be able to facilitate social interaction, since female students are more comfortable sharing ideas among their peers.To this end, the study intend to consider the assumptions of community of inquiry model which highlights three important constructs that provide theoretical details for consideration in this study. To be specific, this research examines the impact of social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence of online social games on E-learning usage among female students of higher institutions .To achieve these objectives, three hypotheses were formulated based on previous studies. In order to examine these hypotheses, data was collected among female students at school of computing, Universiti Utara Malaysia . While the sample size of the study was 80 female students and the data was subjected to tests of reliability, descriptive statistics, correlations, and multiple regression analysis. The findings of this study revealed that, the attributes of online social games; cognitive presence and teaching presence have positive significant impact on E-learning usage. Meanwhile, social presence does not have a significant impact on E-learning usage

The impact of investment law no. (4) 2006 on the foreign direct investment and the antecedent effect on the labour market in Kurdistan regional government

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the impacts of Investment Law no. (4) 2006 on the foreign direct investment and the antecedent effect on the labor market in Kurdistan. The main objective of this research is to analyze the impact of FDI on labour market .This study uses qualitative approaches. Primary data were generated from officials and companies interviews and secondary data was collected from various sources of government publications. The objective of this research is to identify the roles of FDI on Kurdistan’s Labour market and economic growth; also it intends to emphasize the roles of investment laws in KRG in enticing FDI and its influence on the KRG’s labour market. This study founds positive relationship between FDI and labour market. The study also discovered that labour market was developed through FDI and hundreds of job opportunities created by foreign labour. This stressed that Investment Law No (4) was effective in bringing foreign investors in Kurdistan, which impacted different sectors economy and labour market. However, if the law was effective in a period of time, for now, it needs to be amended and several acts in this law should be changed in order to maximize the advantages of FDI and targeting country development vision. The law was resulted the misuse of public lands as well as the lack of diversification of investment on sectors. The law should also be amended in the way to diversify investment sectors. Generally, FDI and investment law resulted in creating a positive environment for local workers as well as overall economic growth of the country

Risk factors affecting the ability for earned value management to accurately assess the performance of infrastructure projects in Australia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate a set of risk-related factors influencing the earned value management (EVM) concept as an assessment technique in evaluating the progress of modern sustainable infrastructure construction projects. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative research approach has been adopted for identifying risk-related factors influencing EVM concept from a literature review and through interviewing industry personnel, followed by an inductive process to form sets of key factors and their measuring items. Findings – EVM is a common method for assessing project performance. A weakness of this approach is that EVM assessment in its current form does not measure the impact of a number of project performance factors that result from the complexity of modern infrastructure construction projects, and thus does not accurately assess their impact in this performance. This paper discusses and explains a range of potential risk factors to evaluating project performance such as sustainability, stakeholder requirements, communication, procurement strategy, weather, experience of staff, site condition, design issues, financial risk, subcontractor, government requirements and material. In addition, their measuring items were identified. Practical implications – This research assists projects managers to improve the evaluation process of infrastructure construction performance by incorporating a range of factors likely to impact on that performance and which are not included in current EVM calculations. Originality/value – This research addresses the need to include in the EVM calculation a range of risk factors affecting the performance of infrastructure projects in Australia and therefore makes this calculation a more reliable tool for assessing project performance

Occurrence of Anti- Gonadotropins Hormones Antibodies in Rabbits Immunized with Pseudomonas Aeruginos

The roles of gonadotropins hormones in fertility are well documented. This report deals with the effect of rabbit anti-Pseudomonas aeruginosa immune sera binding and depleting human Leutinizing hormone (LH) and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH). Capturing ELlSA (Pull-down assay) was used to enumerate the depletion potential of immune sera. The finding indicated the presence of anti- hormones antibodies in anti-bacteria immune sera. Percent depletion of males anti-bacteria antisera for (LH) was 35.1 ± 9.6 in test versus 3.3 ± 5.8 control (P=0.001) and for (FSH) was 38.95± 7.96 in test versus 2.1± 1.70 in control (P=0.0001). On the Other hand, the percent depletion of female anti-bacteria antisera for LH was 10.9±16.9 in test versus 0.6± 1.07 in control, and for FSH was 14.04± 21.79 in test versus 1.075 ± 1.07 for control. The presence of anti-gonadotropins hormones antibodies generated through immunization with Pseudomonas aeruginosa implicates a role of the immune response to this bacterium in immune-mediated effect in human fertility process. Keywords: Anti - Gonadotropins, Anti-Hormone antibody, fertilit

The Construction of the Speaker and Fictional World in The Small Mirrors: Critical Stylistic Analysis

This thesis conducts a Critical Stylistic Analysis of Sherko Bekas’ The Small Mirrors, with the help of metaphor analysis. Five textual conceptual functions (Jeffries, 2010): Naming and Describing; Equating and Contrasting; Representing Processes/Events/States of being; Assuming and Implying and Prioritizing are used to analyse the poems. I also analyse the connotations of metaphor. These functions and metaphor analysis show how the texts construct the speaker and the fictional world in Bekas’ The Small Mirrors and the ideologies behind such constructions. The ranges of ideation – ideology in Bekas’ poetry identified by these tools are: 1. Suffering and survival are inexorable 2. Martyrdom is positive 3. Valuing one’s nation and identity is positive 4. The speaker and the people lack control over the situation My thesis aims to create a version of the Critical Stylistic model that helps me to show the depiction of the speaker and the fictional world in The Small Mirrors. I argue that Critical Stylistics is applicable to the Kurdish poetry, but it needs modifications and that the tools might work in hierarchical ranks meaning that some tools are given primary focus over others because of the difference between English and Kurdish. I use Jeffries’ (2010) Critical Stylistics and add any required modification for the textual conceptual functions to get a complete model for the analysis of The Small Mirrors. The model can show how the speaker and the fictional world are constructed which I aim to reveal. The textual conceptual functions construct a coherent perspective of the reality of the fictional world in Bekas’ poetry. The linguistic images of the fictional world of Bekas’ poetry are repetitions that become part of the naturalised ideologies of the writer

Effect of Corrugation Angle and Direction on the Performance of Corrugated Steel Plate Shear Walls

Corrugated steel plate shear wall (CSPSW) is one of the lateral resistance systems which consists mainly of steel frame (beam and column) with vertical or horizontal corrugated steel plate connected to the frame by weld, bolts or both. This type of steel shear wall characterized by low cost and short construction time with high strength, ductility, initial stiffness and excellent ability to dissipate energy. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of corrugation angle and its direction on the performance of CSPSW under cyclic loading. The Finite element analysis was employed to achieve the research aim. The FE models were validated with experimental data available in the literature. Results reveal that the corrugation angle has a clear influence on initial stiffness, strength, ductility, and energy dissipation of CSPSW. The optimum performance of CSPSW can be obtained with angles of 30o for CSPSW with vertical corrugation and 20o for CSPSW with horizontal corrugation. The use of CSPSW with vertical corrugation provides higher strength, stiffness, and ductility compared to CSPSW with horizontal corrugation. Therefore, it is recommended to use CSPSW with vertical corrugation

Fast learning algorithm for Gabor transformation, A

Includes bibliographical references.An adaptive learning approach for the computation of the coefficients of the generalized nonorthogonal 2-D Gabor transform representation is introduced in this correspondence. The algorithm uses a recursive least squares (RLS) type algorithm. The aim is to achieve minimum mean squared error for the reconstructed image from the set of the Gabor coefficients. The proposed RLS learning offers better accuracy and faster convergence behavior when compared with the least mean squares (LMS)-based algorithms. Applications of this scheme in image data reduction are also demonstrated