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This search aims to study and test the effect of using a new material (mortar infiltrated fiber concrete) as repair material in crucial regions that need a special type of repair like (deck of bridges, pavements, and defense structures). This work consisted of three stages: the first stage; testing the engineering properties of slurry infiltrated fiber concrete (compressive, splitting tensile, flexural and bond strengths), by using different types of fibers (End hooked steel fiber, Micro steel fiber, Polypropylene fiber, and Synthetic fiber), in five different types of mortar infiltrated fiber concrete mixes (with a volumetric ratio of fiber 6%), and the age of test was 28 days. After studying the behavior of these mixes in these tests, the second stage of this study was concluded casting reference slab with dimensions 900×900×80 mm from normal strength concrete and repairing two sets of damaged slabs (with dimensions 900×900×50 mm, the first set consist of five slabs damaged in the compression zone, and the second set consist of five slabs damaged in tension zone), the two sets repaired with repair layer from mortar infiltrated fiber concrete with thickness 30 mm. The third stage of the study was testing the effect of the repair material (mortar infiltrated fiber concrete) on the flexural behavior of the repaired slab specimens in (flexural strength, deflection characteristics, and ductility), through using a hydraulic jack with a four-point load system. The results of testing slab specimens indicated significant improvement in the flexural behavior of the repaired slab when compared with the reference slab, the slabs repaired in the compression zone recorded increasing in range 2-39% in ultimate load and the slabs that repaired in tension zone recorded 4-71% increasing in ultimate load .also recorded better deflection values through testing the slabs specimens that repaired. The ductility of the repaired slab specimens increased significantly from 25 to 91% compared with the reference slab specimens. These results indicated excellent effect mortar infiltrated fiber concrete as a perfect repair material for slabs that damaged in compression and tension zones.

In this paper, improving the punching shear of slab column connection using mortar infiltrated fiber concrete is studied. Eight specimens of reinforced concrete slabs identical in dimension and reinforcement were tested, six of them were casting with hybrid concrete (normal strength concrete and mortar infiltrated fiber concrete) and two specimens were cast with normal strength concrete as control specimens. All specimens were tested under vertical loading. The mortar infiltrated fiber concrete was cast monolithically with the normal strength concrete at different thickness at one and a half times of the effective depth (1.5d) at the center of the slab, once at all the thickness of cross section of the slab and the others at half thickness either tension or compression face of the slabs all cases cast with two types of fiber. The vertical load was applied upward through a square column with a dimension of (100 mm). In all slabs, no failure in mortar infiltrated fiber concrete was observed. The test results showed that the use of mortar infiltrated fiber concrete improves the punching shear strength for some cases according to the type of fibers and the location of casting mortar infiltrated fiber concrete in slabs. The enhancement in punching shear strength due to using mortar infiltrated fiber concrete at 1.5d square shape (265 mm) ranged from 4% to 46% compared with the control specimens.

Purpose The aims of this study were to (a) determine if a high-quality adaptation of an audiovisual nonword repetition task can be completed by children with wide-ranging hearing abilities and to (b) examine whether performance on that task is sensitive to child demographics, hearing status, language, working memory, and executive function abilities. Method An audiovisual version of a nonword repetition task was adapted and administered to 100 school-aged children grouped by hearing status: 35 with normal hearing, 22 with mild bilateral hearing loss, 17 with unilateral hearing loss, and 26 cochlear implant users. Participants also completed measures of vocabulary, working memory, and executive function. A generalized linear mixed-effects model was used to analyze performance on the nonword repetition task. Results All children were able to complete the nonword repetition task. Children with unilateral hearing loss and children with cochlear implants repeated nonwords with less accuracy than normal-hearing peers. After adjusting for the influence of vocabulary and working memory, main effects were found for syllable length and hearing status, but no interaction effect was observed. Conclusions The audiovisual nonword repetition task captured individual differences in the performance of children with wide-ranging hearing abilities. The task could act as a useful tool to aid in identifying children with unilateral or mild bilateral hearing loss who have language impairments beyond those imposed by the hearing loss.

BACKGROUND: Digital pathology practice is rapidly gaining popularity among practicing anatomic pathologists. Acceptance is higher among the newer generation of pathologists who are willing to adapt to this new diagnostic method due to the advantages offered by whole slide imaging (WSI) compared to traditional light microscopy (TLM). We performed this validation study because we plan to implement the WSI system for diagnostic services. OBJECTIVES: Determine the feasibility of using digital pathology for diagnostic services by assessing the equivalency of WSI and TLM. DESIGN: A laboratory-based cross-sectional study. SETTING: Central laboratory at a tertiary health care center. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Four practicing surgical pathologists participated in this study. Each pathologist blindly reviewed 60 surgical neuropathology cases with a minimum 8-week washout-period between the two diagnostic modalities (WSI vs. TLM). Intraobserver concordance rates between WSI and TLM diagnoses as compared to the original diagnosis were calculated. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Overall intraobserver concordance rates between each diagnostic method (WSI and TLM) and original diagnosis. SAMPLE SIZE: 60 in-house surgical neuropathology cases. RESULTS: The overall intraobserver concordance rate between TLM and original diagnosis was 86.3% (range 76.7%-91.7%) versus 80.8% for WSI (range 68.3%-88.3%). These findings are suggestive of the superiority of TLM, but the Fleiss' Kappa statistic indicated that the two methods are equivalent, despite the low level of the K value. CONCLUSION: WSI is not inferior to the light microscopy and is feasible for primary diagnosis in surgical neuropathology. However, to ensure the best results, only formally trained neuropathologists should handle the digital neuropathology service. LIMITATIONS: Only one diagnostic slide per case rather than the whole set of slides, sample size was relatively small, and there was an insufficient number of participating neuropathologists. CONFLICT OF INTEREST: None.

Objectives: The goal of this qualitative research study was to better understand of how the mother-daughter relationship shaped by different ecologies in a Muslim community in the United States (US) influences their daughters' health behaviors. Methods: Using a criterion sampling strategy, 11 immigrant Muslim mothers and their American Muslim adolescent daughters aged 12-18 years who were born and also raised in the US were recruited (N=22) and interviewed. The interviews were transcribed verbatim, coded, and analyzed following phenomenological research methods. Results: Mothers in this sample explained that to share their health values with their daughters, they needed to be close, supportive, open-minded, and good listeners to them. The results revealed that daughters who perceived that their mothers' values were shaped by 3 factors – religion, culture of origin, and acculturation were more likely to follow healthy behaviors. Conclusion: The findings and the conceptual model will help explain how these maternal factors can work together to shape American Muslim adolescent daughters' health behaviors.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of Ears On, an intervention designed to increase toddlers’ use of hearing devices. A single-case, multiple-baseline design across participants was used with three parent–child dyads who demonstrated low hearing aid use despite enrollment in traditional early intervention services. Data logging technology was used to objectively measure hearing aid use. A functional relationship was identified between participation in the intervention and the number of hours children utilized their hearing aids. Two dyads met the criterion set for completing the intervention: an average of 8 hr of daily hearing aid use. One dyad did not reach this criterion but did meet the parent’s goal of full-time use in the child’s educational setting. For all dyads, increases in use were maintained 1 month after completion of the intervention. Findings support use of this short-term, intensive, individualized intervention to improve hearing aid use for toddlers with hearing loss.

Objectives To describe the impact of effusion volume, viscosity, and purulence on the audiologic profiles of children with otitis media with effusion. Design Fifty-one ears from children between the ages of 8 months and 11 years who had a diagnosis of otitis media with effusion and were scheduled for tympanostomy tube placement were recruited from medical clinics. The control group consisted of 17 ears from children between the ages of 10 months and 11 years without a recent history of otitis media and were recruited from a database of research volunteers. Participants received a comprehensive audiologic testing battery consisting of tympanometry, otoacoustic emissions, behavioral audiometric thresholds, and auditory brainstem response testing. For children with otitis media, this testing battery occurred 1 to 2 days before surgery. Middle ear effusions were characterized and collected on the day of surgery during tympanostomy tube placement from ears with otitis media with effusion. The comprehensive audiologic testing battery was completed postoperatively as well for most participants. Results Effusion volume, categorized in each ear as clear, partial, or full, effected the audiologic results. Ears with full effusions had moderate hearing losses, few to no measurable otoacoustic emissions, and delayed Wave V latencies. Ears with partial effusions and clear ears both had slight to mild hearing losses and normal Wave V latencies, though ears with partial effusions had fewer measurable otoacoustic emissions than clear ears. Normal-hearing control ears with no recent history of otitis media with effusion demonstrated normal audiometric thresholds, present otoacoustic emissions, and normal Wave V latencies. Repeat postoperative testing demonstrated improvements in audiologic testing results for all of the otitis media with effusion volume groups, with no significant differences remaining between the three otitis media with effusion groups. However, significant differences between otitis media with effusion ears and normal-hearing control ears persisted postoperatively, with otitis media with effusion ears demonstrating significantly poorer audiometric thresholds and reduced otoacoustic emissions as compared to normal control ears. The effect of effusion viscosity and purulence could not be systematically evaluated because minimal variability in effusion viscosity and purulence was observed in our sample, with nearly all effusions being mucoid and nonpurulent. Conclusions Effusion volume observed at the time of tympanostomy tube surgery was found to play a significant role in outcomes and responses on a range of audiologic tests that compose the standard clinical pediatric audiologic assessment battery. Full middle ear effusions were associated with a moderate hearing loss, and few to no measurable otoacoustic emissions were detected. Ears with a recent diagnosis of otitis media with effusion but clear at the time of tympanostomy tube placement had less hearing loss and a greater number of present otoacoustic emissions than ears with full or partial effusions but were still found to have poorer hearing sensitivity than the healthy control ears. Differences between ears with otitis media with effusion and healthy control ears persisted on postoperative assessments of otoacoustic emissions and audiometric thresholds, though there were no remaining effects of the presurgical effusion volume group.

We report a facile one-pot solution phase synthesis of one-dimensional Ge1-x Sn x nanowires. These nanowires were synthesized in situ via a solution-liquid-solid (SLS) approach in which triphenylchlorogermane was reduced by sodium borohydride in the presence of tin nanoparticle seeds. Straight Ge1-x Sn x nanowires were obtained with an average diameter of 60 ± 20 nm and an approximate aspect ratio of 100. Energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and powder x-ray diffraction (PXRD) analysis revealed that tin was homogeneously incorporated within the germanium lattices at levels up to 10 at%, resulting in a measured lattice constant of 0.5742 nm. The crystal structure and growth orientation of the nanowires were investigated using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The nanowires adopted a face-centred-cubic structure with individual wires exhibiting growth along either the 111, 110 or 112 directions, in common with other group IV nanowires. Growth in the 112 direction was found to be accompanied by longitudinal planar twin defects. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.

Chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) is a perennial plant of the Asteraceae (Compositae) family, collected, domesticated and cultivated in Europe, India and Egypt, like endive (C. endivia L.), its closest related species. It grows as a weed in temperate climatic regions and is widely cultivated in northern Europe. Chicory is beneficial to both humans and animals due to its high protein content, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins and phytoactive compounds. It is consumed as a vegetable, edible flowers, coffee substitute and for medicinal and cosmetic metabolites. It is also used in hepatoprotective compounds and as a flavoring in beer. Its extract is an inhibitor of salmonella. It is consumed as an animal feed, always with great care to avoid toxicity. Industrial chicory is developed mainly for its inulin content. There is recent interest in genetically engineering chicory to obtain higher yields and create new cultivars, but chicory potential still awaits development, especially in Asian countries. This chapter presents an overview of the origin, distribution, taxonomy and conservation of genetic resources, as well as crop cultivation practices and advances in modern biotechnology and molecular biology and their application for crop improvement concurrently with traditional chicory breeding.

OBJECTIVE. The objective of this work is to determine whether there is a systematic effect of middle-ear effusion volume on wideband acoustic immittance in children with surgically-confirmed otitis media with effusion. DESIGN. Wideband acoustic immittance was measured in 49 ears from children (9 months - 11 years) who had a diagnosis of otitis media with effusion and compared to 14 ears from children (10 months - 10 years) without a recent history of otitis media. For children with otitis media with effusion, wideband acoustic immittance testing took place in the child’s pre-operative waiting room prior to surgical placement of tympanostomy tubes. Testing was completed in a pressurized condition (wideband tympanometry) for all ears as well as in an ambient condition in a subset of ears. Intraoperative findings regarding effusion volume were reported by the surgeons immediately prior to tube placement and confirmed following myringotomy. This classified the volume of effusion as compared to middle-ear volume categorically as either full, partial, or clear of effusion. The type of wideband acoustic immittance explored in this work was absorbance. Absorbance responses were grouped based on effusion volume into one of four groups: full effusions, partial effusions, ears clear of effusion at the time of surgery, and normal control ears. Standard tympanometry was also completed on all ears. RESULTS. Absorbance is systematically reduced as the volume of the middle-ear effusion increases. This reduction is present at most frequencies but is greatest in the frequency range from 1–5 kHz. A multivariate logistic regression approach was utilized to classify ears based on effusion volume. The regression approach classified ears as effusion present (full and partial ears) or absent (clear ears and normal control ears) with 100% accuracy, ears with effusion present as either partial or full with 100% accuracy, and ears without effusion as either normal control ears or ears clear of effusion with 75% accuracy. Regression performance was also explored when the dataset was split into a training set (70% of the data) and a validation test set (30% of the data) to simulate how this approach would perform on unseen data in a clinical setting. Accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve are reported. Overall, this approach demonstrates high sensitivity and specificity for classifying ears as effusion being present or absent and as present effusions being full or partial with areas under the curve ranging from 1 to 0.944. Despite the lack of effusion present in both clear ears and normal control ears, this approach was able to distinguish between these ears, but with a more moderate sensitivity and specificity. No systematic effect of effusion volume was found on standard tympanometry. CONCLUSIONS. Wideband acoustic immittance, and more specifically, absorbance, is a strong and sensitive indicator of the volume of a middle-ear effusion in children with otitis media with effusion.

Vibrio cholerae is a cause of serious endemic diarrhoea associated with cholera in many regions in the world. A total of 256 stool and rectal swabs were collected from patients suspected to have cholera admitted to three hospitals in Hillah, Babylon Governorate, Iraq, for the period 1 September to 29 December 2017. After the routine culture of samples for isolation and identification of V. cholerae isolates, PCR was performed for molecular detection of V. cholerae isolates based on 16S ribosomal RNA gene. Toxigenicity was detected by RTX toxin genes. PCR technique emphasized molecular detection of V. cholerae for eight isolates. Only two isolates (25%) possessed both the rtxA and rtxC genes, while only three isolates (37.5%) possessed the rtxB gene. DNA sequencing was performed for the eight isolates via analysis and phylogenetic tree. The observed bacterial variants were compared to their neighbour homologous reference sequences using the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) BLAST server (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool; https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi ). The findings indicated that the eight investigated isolates of V. cholerae were positioned in three different phylogenetic positions. Partial sequence dissimilarities were reported between GenBank isolate accession number MK212155.1 and these six clustered GenBank accession numbers of the same species. For the first time in Babylon Governorate, Iraq, the molecular assay, sequencing and phylogenetic tree are reported for V. cholerae and their toxins isolated during the 2017 cholera outbreak.

Traditional steel reinforcing rebars are susceptible to corrosion as they are exposed to weather conditions. This vulnerability creates a limit to its effectiveness as a reinforcement within concrete structures. Corrosion of steel reinforcement can lead to damage and deterioration of reinforcement in concrete structures, as well as put the overall structure at risk of accumulated damage and ultimately failure. This paper involves an alternative material to longitudinal and spiral reinforcements consisting of Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP). The paper explores the shear strength of circular concrete beams reinforced with GFRP rebars. A total of four full-scale concrete beams with a total length of 2500 mm and a diameter of 260 mm were tested to failure in four-point loading setup. The investigated parameters were the type of longitudinal reinforcement (steel vs GFRP), number of longitudinal rebars, and the pitch of spirals. The performance of the GFRP beams is compared to their steel beams counterparts. The comparison involved: failure load, load-deformation behavior, and failure mode. It was observed that flexural cracking patterns are initially manifested, and ultimately shear cracking patterns emerge. The GFRP beams provided significantly higher strengths and impeccable protection against corrosion than their steel counterparts. The steel-reinforced beams, however, provide superior ductility and deformation city.

Steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) has obtained attention from researchers and engineers to be employed in various structural applications to improve concrete structures' performance. However, there are limited experimental test results on the impact of the beam cross-section area along with fiber dosage and configuration on the torsional behavior of the SFRC beams. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of beam section sizes on the characteristics of the torsional performance of cracking and ultimate torsional strengths of SFRC beams. Fiber contents of 0.0, 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 % with two different lengths of steel fiber were mixed with concrete to study fiber lengths and dosage influences on the torsional behavior. Moreover, torsional loads and cracking and ultimate torque equations of SFRC beams with different fiber dosages and lengths were proposed. Results showed that the SFRC beams exhibited higher cracking torsional moment than the control beams. The hooked steel fiber reinforced beam exhibited the highest increase of the total torsional toughness with the large area and 1.5% fiber dosage, while the straight micro steel fiber beams show good performance with a 1.5% fiber dosage with a small cross-section area. The results from past research and the proposed equations of the cracking and ultimate torques exhibited a good correlation.

This paper evaluates the quality of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals’ report for 2020, and devises a new data quality assessment framework based on analysing many data quality frameworks. Data in this paper is collected from the official UN SDG official website, and the national statistics offices of the UN countries. A weighted-score sum module is also being utilized to find the best data quality dimension. These dimensions are then used to create a new data quality framework. It is found that the UN SDGs used a data quality framework that is based on statistical output factors and ignores other quality factors and therefore the score for assessing this report is 56%. The perceived identified gaps include: countries are using different quality and assessment frameworks which cause inconsistency in data quality; data is outdated and incomplete; data is not available for many indicators and countries; cost and efficiency are not part of the UN SDG data quality framework; therefore weak data management is found. Areas for improvement include creating one comprehensive data quality framework for all countries will ensure the highest data quality.

The authors investigate the impact of big data's velocity on greening IP over WDM networks. They classify the processing velocity of big data into two modes: expedited-data and relaxed-data modes. Expedited-data demands higher amount of computational resources to reduce the execution time compared with the relaxed-data. They developed a mixed integer linear programming model to progressively process big data at strategic locations, dubbed processing nodes (PNs), built into the network along the path from the source to the destination. The extracted information from the raw traffic is smaller in volume compared with the original traffic each time the data is processed, hence, reducing network power consumption. The results showed that up to 60% network power saving is achieved when nearly 100% of the data required relaxed processing. In contrast, only 15% of network power saving is gained when nearly 100% of the data required expedited processing. The authors obtained around 33% power saving in the mixed modes (i.e. when ∼50% of the data is processed in the relaxed mode and 50% of the data is processed in expedited mode), compared with the classical approach where all the processing is achieved inside the centralised data centres only.

The purpose of this quantitative research was to measure customer satisfaction with bank tellers and bank teller leadership attributes and to determine the relationships between the two and the effect of gender on the ratings. Data were collected at three bank branches in West Amman-Jordan with 126 bank customers. The results revealed statistically significant differences in the ratings of the leadership attributes: Ethics had highest ratings while innovation had the lowest ratings. There were significantly different gender ratings in two leadership attributes such that women’s ratings were higher than the men’s in bank knowledge and communication leadership attributes. Also, men and women differed significantly on satisfaction; women were more satisfied than men. Moreover, results revealed that satisfaction correlated directly, strongly, and significantly with all five leadership attributes. Additionally, results showed that bank knowledge, innovation, and gender all made unique and statistically significant contributions to predicting satisfaction with bank tellers.

In this paper, we study the impact of big data’s volume and variety dimensions on energy efficient big data networks (EEBDN) by developing a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to encapsulate the distinctive features of these two dimensions. First, a progressive energy efficient edge, intermediate, and central processing technique is proposed to process big data’s raw traffic by building processing nodes (PNs) in the network along the way from the sources to datacenters. Second, we validate the MILP operation by developing a heuristic that mimics, in real time, the behavior of the MILP for the volume dimension. Third, we test the energy efficiency limits of our green approach under several conditions where PNs are less energy efficient in terms of processing and communication compared to data centers. Fourth, we test the performance limits in our energy efficient approach by studying a “software matching” problem where different software packages are required to process big data. The results are then compared to the classical big data networks (CBDN) approach where big data is only processed inside centralized data centers. Our results revealed that up to 52% and 47% power saving can be achieved by the EEBDN approach compared to the CBDN approach, under the impact of volume and variety scenarios, respectively. Moreover, our results identify the limits of the progressive processing approach and in particular the conditions under which the CBDN centralized approach is more appropriate given certain PNs energy efficiency and software availability levels.