This study examines the causes of time delays and cost overruns in a selection of thirty post-disaster reconstruction projects in Iraq. Although delay factors have been studied in many countries and contexts, little data exists from countries under the conditions characterizing Iraq during the last 10-15 years. A case study approach was used, with thirty construction projects of different types and sizes selected from the Baghdad region. Project data was gathered from a survey which was used to build statistical relationships between time and cost delay ratios and delay factors in post disaster projects. The most important delay factors identified were contractor failure, redesigning of designs/plans and change orders, security is
... Show MoreThis study aims to suggest an alternative to the use of quality agricultural soil in the brick industry (Iraq). The Late Miocene claystone bed in the Injana Formation in central Iraq was targeted through the study of 18 exposed sections that were sampled by using the trench sampling method. The claystones are characterized by quartz (36.4%) followed by calcite (32.8%), quartz (36.4%) feldspar (2.6%), gypsum (1.3%) and dolomite (0.7%), kaolinite (10.5%), illite (7.7%), chlorite (6.7%), palygorskite (6.0%) and montmorillonite (0.7%). New thermal mineral phases were formed at 950°C, including diopside (62.9%), quartz (18.4%), wollastonite (8.28%), akermanite (7.6%), Anorthite (6.25%), Nosean (4.9%), gehlenite (3.75%) and Lazurite (3.1
... Show MoreZiegler and Nichols proposed the well-known Ziegler-Nichols method to tune the coefficients of PID controller. This tuning method is simple and gives fixed values for the coefficients which make PID controller have weak adaptabilities for the model parameters variation and changing in operating conditions. In order to achieve adaptive controller, the Neural Network (NN) self-tuning PID control is proposed in this paper which combines conventional PID controller and Neural Network learning capabilities. The proportional, integral and derivative (KP, KI, KD) gains are self tuned on-line by the NN output which is obtained due to the error value on the desired output of the system under control. The conventio
... Show MoreRecently, the phenomenon of the spread of fake news or misinformation in most fields has taken on a wide resonance in societies. Combating this phenomenon and detecting misleading information manually is rather boring, takes a long time, and impractical. It is therefore necessary to rely on the fields of artificial intelligence to solve this problem. As such, this study aims to use deep learning techniques to detect Arabic fake news based on Arabic dataset called the AraNews dataset. This dataset contains news articles covering multiple fields such as politics, economy, culture, sports and others. A Hybrid Deep Neural Network has been proposed to improve accuracy. This network focuses on the properties of both the Text-Convolution Neural
... Show MoreIn cognitive radio system, the spectrum sensing has a major challenge in needing a sensing method, which has a high detection capability with reduced complexity. In this paper, a low-cost hybrid spectrum sensing method with an optimized detection performance based on energy and cyclostationary detectors is proposed. The method is designed such that at high signal-to-noise ratio SNR values, energy detector is used alone to perform the detection. At low SNR values, cyclostationary detector with reduced complexity may be employed to support the accurate detection. The complexity reduction is done in two ways: through reducing the number of sensing samples used in the autocorrelation process in the time domain and through using the Slid
... Show MoreDairy wastewater generally contains fats, lactose, whey proteins, and nutrients. Casein precipitation causes the effluent to decompose into a dark, strong-smelling sludge. Fluid waste contains soluble organic matter, suspended solids, and gaseous organic matter, which cause undesirable taste and smell, grant tone and turbidity, and advance eutrophication, which plays an essential role in increasing biological oxygen demand (BOD) in water. It also contains detergents and disinfecting agents from the rinses and washing processes, which increase the need for chemical oxygen (COD). One of the characteristics of dairy effluents is their relatively high temperature, high organic contents, and wide pH range, so the discharge of wastewater into
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