Heavy metal (HM) pollution has long been a significant source of environmental deterioration and a problem for the safety of food. Iraqis prefer rice over any other food, and since heavy metals have a direct impact on health, their traces in rice have drawn particular attention. Before cooking rice, it is usual in Iraq to wash and soak it. Some 55 varieties of imported and local rice were sampled from Erbil city markets in 2022 with the aim of determining the concentration of As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb before and after soaking. Standard procedure of acid digestions was applied on the raw and soaked samples. The solutions were analyzed using ICPE-9820 Shimadzu. The mean concentrations of As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb (in mg/kg) in the rice samples bef

Background: The new concepts and technologies continue to change the dynamics of endodontic practices in the world. Rapid and significant changes in techniques, instrument design, and the type of metals used to manufacture endodontic instruments which have been made during the last few years in an attempt to overcome canal preparation errors. The purpose of this study is to measure and compare canal transportation and centering ability of Self Adjusting File with two rotary nickel-titanium (Ni-Ti) systems, ProTaper and BioRaCe at different levels. Material and Methods: Forty five distal roots of mandibular first molars with moderate curvature were selected using Schneider method. Roots were divided randomly into 3 groups of 15 each and were

The first aim of this paper was to evaluate the push-out bond strength of the gutta-percha coating of Thermafil and GuttaCore and compare it with that of gutta-percha used to coat an experimental hydroxyapatite/polyethylene (HA/PE) obturator. The second aim was to assess the thickness of gutta-percha around the carriers of GuttaCore and HA/PE obturators using microcomputed tomography (μCT). Ten (size 30) 1 mm thick samples of each group (Thermafil, GuttaCore, and HA/PE) were prepared. An orthodontic wire with a diameter of 0.5 mm was attached to the plunger of an Instron machine in order to allow the push-out testing of the gutta-percha coating. Five samples of (GuttaCore and HA/PE) were scanned using

In this study, the results of the uranium concentrations and specific activity in 10 rice samples are described using a solid-state track detector (CR-39). Samples were collected from various local Iraqi markets with different origins (Iraq, India, America, and Thailand). Our findings found that the results of uranium concentration in all studied samples are ranging from (0.55 ± 0.28 to 1.74 ± 0.31) ppm with a weighted average of (1.24 ± 0.99) ppm. Also, results demonstrate that the specific activity values of the studied samples swing between values of (6.88 ± 3.52 and 21.49 ± 3.85) Bq/Kg. The obtained results of the studied rice samples are indicated that it is less than the acceptable limit of those studies established by ma

Oryza sativa japonica (ofada rice) is largely grown in Aramoko, Abakaliki and Ofada are communities and consumed by both the poor and rich in Nigeria. A total of twenty ofada rice farmlands were identified in each study area and rice samples were randomly collected, thoroughly mixed to make a representative sample from each farmland. Soil samples were collected in each farm to a depth of 5-15cm from at least eight different points and thoroughly mixed together to form a representative sample. The samples were thereafter taken to the laboratory for preparation and spectroscopic analysis. A well-calibrated NaI(Tl) gamma-ray detector was used in spectrometric analysis of the samples and descriptive statistics was used to analyze th

A simple and rapid high performance liquid chromatographic with fluorescence detection method for the determination of the aflatoxin B1, B2, G1 and G2 in peanuts, rice and chilli was developed. The sample was extracted using acetonitrile:water (90:10, v/v%) and then purified by using ISOLUTE multimode solid phase extraction. After the pre-column derivatisation, the analytes were separated within 3.7 min using Chromolith performance RP-18e (100–4.6 mm) monolithic column. To assess the possible effects of endogenous components in the food items, matrix-matched calibration was used for the quantification and validation. The recoveries of aflatoxins that were spiked into food samples were 86.38–104.5% and RSDs were <4.4%. The method was

The Iraqi construction industry suffers from many issues that lead to many design errors, clashes, delays and cost overruns. Therefore, applying constructability will prevent these issues from happening, as it has proven its positive effect in different projects around the world. The goal of this paper is to use building information modelling (BIM) to assess the constructability, provide the opportunities for the project stakeholders to choose the best constructable design alternative and find the affection of applying constructability on project cost. The practical side of this research consists of two parts: in the first part, 37 factors are collected from the literature review as factors that effect on constructability. After tha

Classification of imbalanced data is an important issue. Many algorithms have been developed for classification, such as Back Propagation (BP) neural networks, decision tree, Bayesian networks etc., and have been used repeatedly in many fields. These algorithms speak of the problem of imbalanced data, where there are situations that belong to more classes than others. Imbalanced data result in poor performance and bias to a class without other classes. In this paper, we proposed three techniques based on the Over-Sampling (O.S.) technique for processing imbalanced dataset and redistributing it and converting it into balanced dataset. These techniques are (Improved Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique (Improved SMOTE),  Border

Free Radical Copolymerization of Styrene/ Methyl Methacrylate were prepared chemically under Nitrogen ,which was investigated, in the present of Benzoyl Peroxide as Initiator at concentration of 2 × 10-3 molar at 70 °C, which was carried out in Benzene as solvent to a certain low conversion . FT-IR spectra were used for determining of the monomer reactivity ratios ,which was obtained by employing the conventional linearization method of Fineman-Ross (F-R) and Kelen-Tüdos (K- T). The experimental results showed the average value for the Styrene r1 / Methyl Methacrylate r2 system, Sty r1 = 0.45 , MMA r2 = 0.38 in the (F–R) Method and r1 = 0.49 , r2 = 0.35 in the (K–T) Method, The Results of this indicated show the random distri