The aim of this study is to shed light on the importance of biofuels as an alternative to conventional energy, in addition to the importance of preserving agricultural crops, which are the main source of this fuel, to maintain food security, especially in developing countries. The increase in global oil prices, in addition to the fear of global warming, are among the main factors that draw the world’s attention to searching for alternative sources of traditional energy, which are sustainable on the one hand, and on the other hand reduce carbon emissions. Therefore, the volume of global investment in renewable energy in general, and in liquid biofuels and biomass in particular, has increased. Global fears emerged that the excessive conversion of large farms suitable for growing food to energy production would threaten global food security. In the first ten years of the new millennium, biofuel production increased fivefold, and the largest increase in biofuel production was recorded in 2007-2008, coinciding with a sharp rise in food prices. Compared to the average food prices in the period 2002-2004, the average global prices of cereals, oils and fats traded were 2 to 2.5 times higher in 2008, this continuous increase in the use of food crops to produce biofuels has reflected on global food security. Accordingly, this review article will address previous studies on biofuel production; identify the theoretical framework for the concept of biofuels and its characteristics, and the relationship between biofuels and food security. In this study, we presented biofuels, which are considered one of the important categories in the field of renewable energy and its environmental and economic effects, as well as the experiences of some countries in its production, and the possibility of benefiting from the natural resources available for its production. We will discuss the scientific (chemical) principles of biofuel production.
Increasing hydrocarbon recovery from tight reservoirs is an essential goal of oil industry in the recent years. Building real dynamic simulation models and selecting and designing suitable development strategies for such reservoirs need basically to construct accurate structural static model construction. The uncertainties in building 3-D reservoir models are a real challenge for such micro to nano pore scale structure. Based on data from 24 wells distributed throughout the Sadi tight formation. An application of building a 3-D static model for a tight limestone oil reservoir in Iraq is presented in this study. The most common uncertainties confronted while building the model were illustrated. Such as accurate estimations of cut-off perm
... Show MoreDetection of early clinical keratoconus (KCN) is a challenging task, even for expert clinicians. In this study, we propose a deep learning (DL) model to address this challenge. We first used Xception and InceptionResNetV2 DL architectures to extract features from three different corneal maps collected from 1371 eyes examined in an eye clinic in Egypt. We then fused features using Xception and InceptionResNetV2 to detect subclinical forms of KCN more accurately and robustly. We obtained an area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) of 0.99 and an accuracy range of 97–100% to distinguish normal eyes from eyes with subclinical and established KCN. We further validated the model based on an independent dataset with
... Show MoreThis study focused on benthic algae (epipelic and attached algae on concrete lining stream) in Bani-Hassan stream in Holly Karbala, Iraq. The qualitative and quantitative studies of benthic algae were done by collecting 240 samples from five sites in the study area for the period from December 2012 to November 2013. Also, the environmental variables of the stream were examined in term of temporary and spatial. The results showed that the stream was alkaline, hard, oligohaline and a well aerated. The total nitrogen to the total phosphorus (TN: TP) ratio indicates nitrogen limitation. 129 species of benthic algae belonging to 57 genera were identified. Bacillariophyceae (diatoms) was the predominant taxon (95 species) followed by Chlorophyce
... Show MoreMicro-perforated panel (MPP) absorber is increasingly gaining popularity as an alternative sound absorber in buildings compared to the well-known synthetic porous materials. A single MPP has a typical feature of a Helmholtz resonator with a high amplitude of absorption but a narrow absorption frequency bandwidth. To improve the bandwidth, a single MPP can be cascaded with another single MPP to form a double-layer MPP. This paper proposes the introduction of inhomogeneous perforation in the double-layer MPP system (DL-iMPP) to enhance the absorption bandwidth of a double-layer MPP. Mathematical models are proposed using the equivalent electrical circuit model and are validated with experiments with good agreement. It is revealed that the DL-
... Show MoreWorldwide, hundreds of millions of people have been infected with COVID-19 since December 2019; however, about 20% or less developed severe symptoms. The main aim of the current study was to assess the relationship between the severity of Covid-19 and different clinical and laboratory parameters. A total number of 466 Arabs have willingly joined this prospective cohort. Out of the total number, 297 subjects (63.7%) had negative COVID-19 tests, and thus, they were recruited as controls, while 169 subjects (36.3%) who tested positive for COVID-19 were enrolled as cases. Out of the total number of COVID-19 patients, 127 (75.15%) presented with mild symptoms, and 42 (24.85%) had severe symptoms. The age range for the partic
... Show MoreThe Geographic Information System (GIS) is considered one of the most prominent programs used to collect, analyze, display, process, and produce geographic information maps for a specific purpose. It is also considered one of the modern database programs. Additionally, we can perform statistical analysis within GIS on predefined data to produce quantitative results. In this study, data was collected from more than 80 engineering projects established in Baghdad City from soil investigation reports for the projects. Geographic information systems were used to produce objective maps showing the variation in the bearing capacity of shallow foundations in the soil of Baghdad Governorate. I
Many authors investigated the problem of the early visibility of the new crescent moon after the conjunction and proposed many criteria addressing this issue in the literature. This article presented a proposed criterion for early crescent moon sighting based on a deep-learned pattern recognizer artificial neural network (ANN) performance. Moon sight datasets were collected from various sources and used to learn the ANN. The new criterion relied on the crescent width and the arc of vision from the edge of the crescent bright limb. The result of that criterion was a control value indicating the moon's visibility condition, which separated the datasets into four regions: invisible, telescope only, probably visible, and certai
... Show Morepatterns of utterance stress in discourse direct attention to specific themes and reactions, controlling the flow and coherence of conversation. this study examines the utterance stress in Steve Harvey's selected episodes from a phono-stylistic perspective. this study is hoped to improve understanding of linguistic mechanism in talk show communication, highlighting the importance of phonetic features in transmitting meaning and increasing broadcast conversation participation. the researcher concentrates on the types of focus functions of utterance stress of some episodes available on YouTube. to conduct the analysis, the researcher adopts (Carr, 2013; Davenport& Hannahs 2005) to analyze utterance stress and Leech and Short (2007
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