Land use change, particularly the expansion of urban areas and associated human activities at the expense of natural and semi-natural areas, is a major ecological issue in urban areas around the world. Climate change being a very strong additional driver for changing the temperature and habitat in the cities. This also applies to Baghdad, Iraq, where urbanisation and climate change exerts a major pressure on the natural habitats of the city, and thus may affect the ability of city planners to adapt to future climate change scenarios. Here we present evidence of substantial growth in urban areas, increases in temperature, and degradation of natural vegetation within Baghdad city by using Remote Sensing techniques and an assessment for the

The Southern Cowpea Beetle Callosobruchus maculatus (F.) is one of the most widespread insect pests of stored legumes, causing a considerable loss during storage, decreasing the net weight of the crops, and resulting in reduced the quality of the crops. This study has been conducted to determine the lifetime, fertility and life table parameters of C. maculatus by using an alkaloids extract from Moringa oleifera leaves at different concentrations 1000, 2000, and 3000 ppm. The result was shown that the lowest survival rate was 49% at a concentration of 1000, 2000 ppm, as compared with the control which was 77%. The lowest reproductive rate (Ro) was 4.76 female/female/generation at the concentration of 1000 ppm, c

Laboratory studies were conducted at the biological control unit, college of Agriculture, University of Baghdad to evaluate some biological aspects of the predator Chilocorus bipustulatus (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae), which is considered one of the most important predators on many insect pests, especially the scale insect, Parlatoria blanchardi, (Homoptera: Diaspididae) on date palms. The results showed that biological parameters of the predator were varied according to different degree of temperature. Egg incubation period was significantly different and reached to 7.5 and 5.44 day at 25 and 30°C respectively, Fertility was the same 100% at both temperature degrees. Larval growth periods were 17.41 and 16.12 day as well as the mortality

An experimental study was conducted to evaluate the effect of AL-coholic extract alkaloid of Cordia myxa leafs in fourth larval stage of lesser grain borer Rhyzopertha dominica. Using alkaline extracts of 8%, the study has been shown clear effect increased in mortality rate for fourth larval stage 93.3% and degressed to 66.6% at 4% concentrate to 13.3% with control treatment .Ahigher percentage of pupal mortality 16.6% at 4% concentrate has been observed, while no natural emergence carried out at concentrates of 4.6% comparing with control treatment of 86.66%, at the same time percentage of deformation has been increased to 16.66% at 4% of extracts and degressed to 6.66% at 6% while no deformation have been shown with control treatment .

Optical burst switching (OBS) network is a new generation optical communication technology. In an OBS network, an edge node first sends a control packet, called burst header packet (BHP) which reserves the necessary resources for the upcoming data burst (DB). Once the reservation is complete, the DB starts travelling to its destination through the reserved path. A notable attack on OBS network is BHP flooding attack where an edge node sends BHPs to reserve resources, but never actually sends the associated DB. As a result the reserved resources are wasted and when this happen in sufficiently large scale, a denial of service (DoS) may take place. In this study, we propose a semi-supervised machine learning approach using k-means algorithm

Several problems have emerged as a result of urban expansion or the connection of urban areas with rural areas. This process has led to the urbanization of rural areas, and to have overlapping edges and margins of areas, which were outside the basic design of the city. Accordingly, the present research assumes that the accelerating growth of Baghdad population has contributed significantly to the process of unplanned urbanization. Thus, the study aims to examine the factors that have led to an increase of urban sprawl at the expense of the agricultural land. The study has thus adopted the descriptive, analytical, and historical approaches relying on the simple linear regression method to predict the phenomenon of urban expansion and its

Obesity-related deaths continue to rise, and thus losing weight in overweight and obese patients is critical to prevent complications. Anredera cordifolia (Ten,) Steenis, species of succulent plant of the genus Basellaceae, is widely used in herbal medicine to decrease body weight. This study evaluated the potential benefits of Anredera cordifolia ethanol extract to reduce body weight in high-fat diet-induced obesity rat model. This was an experimental with post-test only control group design study involving 36 obese rats. They were divided into two groups: three control groups (K1, K2, K3) and three treatment groups (P1, P2, P3). All the groups were induced with high-fat diet, except K1 control group that received a standard di

This work studies the role of serum apelin-36 and Glutathione S-transferases (GST) activity in association with the hormonal, metabolic profiles and their link to the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in healthy and patients' ladies with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). A total of fifty-four (PCOS) patients and thirty-one healthy woman as a control have been studied. The PCOS patients were subdivided on the basis of body-mass-index (BMI), into 2-subgroups (the first group was obese-PCOS with BMI ≥ 30 and the second group was non-obese PCOS MBI<30). Fasting-insulin-levels and Lipid-profile, Homeostatic-model assessment-of-insulin-resistance (HOMA-IR), follicle-stimulating-hormone (FSH), luteinizing-hormone (LH), testosterone and