Steel–concrete–steel (SCS) structural systems have economic and structural advantages over traditional reinforced concrete; thus, they have been widely used. The performance of concrete made from recycled rubber aggregate from scrap tires has been evaluated since the early 1990s. The use of rubberized concrete in structural construction remains necessary because of its high impact resistance, increases ductility, and produces a lightweight concrete; therefore, it adds such important properties to SCS members. In this research, the use of different concrete core materials in SCS was examined. Twelve SCS specimens were subjected to push-out monotonic loading for inspecting their mechanical performance. One specimen was constructed from co

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

       Canonical correlation analysis is one of the common methods for analyzing data and know the relationship between two sets of variables under study, as it depends on the process of analyzing the variance matrix or the correlation matrix. Researchers resort to the use of many methods to estimate canonical correlation (CC); some are biased for outliers, and others are resistant to those values; in addition, there are standards that check the efficiency of estimation methods.

In our research, we dealt with robust estimation methods that depend on the correlation matrix in the analysis process to obtain a robust canonical correlation coefficient, which is the method of Biwe

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

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