This work investigates the use of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) as a high-refractive-index material for quarter-wave distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) in photonic applications. In comparison to Si3N4, a-Si:H enables enhanced optical confinement, broader omnidirectional reflectance, and improved figures of merit, including higher Purcell and quality factors, while minimizing mirror complexity. To evaluate the practical impact of these advantages, a theoretical comparison is conducted between Fabry–Pérot cavities based on a-Si:H/SiO2 and Si3N4/SiO2 DBRs, examining resonance shifts as functions of cavity refractive index (1.0–3.0) and temperature (0–250 °C). The numerical results indicate that Si3N4/SiO2 planar Bragg cavities exhibit a low thermal shift of 0.01–0.03 nm/°C and moderate refractive index sensitivity of approximately 1–10 nm/RIU, confirming their high spectral stability. In contrast, a-Si:H/SiO2 mirrors exhibit higher thermal tunability (0.03–0.1 nm/°C) and increased refractive index sensitivity (10–30 nm/RIU), making them highly suitable for sensing and tunable photonic applications
The most used material in the world after water is concrete, which depends mainly on its manufacture of cement leading to the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2), flying dust, and other greenhouse gasses (GHGs) resulting in pollution of the atmosphere. The emission of CO2 from cement production is approximately 5% of the global anthropogenic CO2. This research focuses on investigating the amount of CO2 emission from the Iraqi General Cement Company plants includes the cement factories of Kirkuk, Al-Qa’em, Fallujah, and Kubaisa, using the GHGs Protocol Measures Program (specifically cement based-method).
Controlling cost in construction projects is an essential issue. This study investigates the most critical problems that cause weakness in cost control in Iraqi construction projects. The quantitative technique was used by conducting a survey directed to professionals who work on construction projects. One hundred and sixty-four questionnaire forms were distributed to private sector companies, government companies, and government institutions, and the responses were subjected to the required statistical analysis. The results indicate that the most influential factors are the weakness in keeping up with the use of modern concepts, methods, and technologies, the delay in receiving the amounts due for work done from the owner, fluctuat
... Show MoreAryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) is a ligand-activated transcription factor and 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) is a potent ligand for AhR and a known carcinogen. While AhR activation by TCDD leads to significant immunosuppression, how this translates into carcinogenic signal is unclear. Recently, we demonstrated that activation of AhR by TCDD in naïve C57BL6 mice leads to massive induction of myeloid derived-suppressor cells (MDSCs). In the current study, we investigated the role of the gut microbiota in TCDD-mediated MDSC induction. TCDD caused significant alterations in the gut microbiome, such as increases in Prevotella and Lactobacillus, while decreasing Sutterella and Bacteroides. Fecal transplants from TCDD-treated
... Show MoreThe present study dealt with the removal of methylene blue from wastewater by using peanut hulls (PNH) as adsorbent. Two modes of operation were used in the present work, batch mode and inverse fluidized bed mode. In batch experiment, the effect of peanut hulls doses 2, 4, 8, 12 and 16 g, with constant initial pH =5.6, concentration 20 mg/L and particle size 2-3.35 mm were studied. The results showed that the percent removal of methylene blue increased with the increase of peanut hulls dose. Batch kinetics experiments showed that equilibrium time was about 3 hours, isotherm models (Langmuir and Freundlich) were used to correlate these results. The results showed that the (Freundlich) model gave the best fitting for adsorption capacity. D
... Show MoreMPEG-DASH is an adaptive bitrate streaming technology that divides video content into small HTTP-objects file segments with different bitrates. With live UHD video streaming latency is the most important problem. In this paper, creating a low-delay streaming system using HTTP 2.0. Based on the network condition the proposed system adaptively determine the bitrate of segments. The video is coded using a layered H.265/HEVC compression standard, then is tested to investigate the relationship between video quality and bitrate for various HEVC parameters and video motion at each layer/resolution. The system architecture includes encoder/decoder configurations and how to embedded the adaptive video streaming. The encoder includes compression besi
... Show MoreAllowing Iraqi companies to use multiple systems and policies leads to varying levels of disclosure and no high symmetry between report preparers and users, and that the adoption of integrated reporting can reduce information asymmetry. The theoretical side addressed the concepts of these variables, and in the practical side the binary variable (0, 1) was used. To compensate for the value of the independent variable (integrated reporting) based on the Central Bank of Iraq’s classification of banks according to the (CAMLES) index, and the dependent variable (information asymmetry) was measured through two measures (price difference, unusual return), the research community was represented by (5) Banks out of the total of banks li
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