Haruki Murakami (1949-present) is a contemporary Japanese writer whose works have been translated into fifty languages and won him plenty of Japanese and international awards. His short stories are well constructed in a weird realistic manner and are mixed with elements of surrealism. His novels and short stories fall under the genre of magical realism. One of the major revolving themes that Murakami wrote about was the haunting feeling of emptiness and disconnectedness in a world which seems to care much for materialism and self-interests.

    The paper explores two of Murakami’s short stories in his book After the Quake (2000) and the relevance of their themes and characters to Iraq after the q

Recent studies agree that the democratic system in a country can only be established in an atmosphere of political and religious freedom. However, the term democracy and the term freedom have become controversial because their concepts remain multiple and different. Karl Popper is one of the most prominent philosophers in modern Western political thought, and one of the defenders of democracy as opposite to dictatorship. It has defined its function by its ability to restrain the ruling elite and to enforce it to prevent their tendency to tyranny. This can be achieved only in the context of the close relationship between democracy and freedom, so, if there is democracy in the absence of absolute freedom, democracy is a gateway to expandin

Background: Breast cancer is a highly heterogeneous disease globally. Trace elements such as copper and zinc have a role in many biochemical reactions as micro source, their metabolism is profoundly altered in neoplastic diseases especially breast cancer which is ranked as the first of female cancersObjective: The aim of the present study is to study the impact of body mass index and some trace elements in Iraqi women with breast cancer.Patients and methods: The group of the study consisted of 25 breast cancer patients; their age range was (25–65) years recruited from the Al-Kadhimia Teaching Hospital and 25 apparently healthy women age matched, over a period of 6 months from January 2015 until June 2015. After the diagnosis was m

The Sarmord Formation is one of the overlooked formations that require more investigations than that achieved before. There are many problems in its definition, age, stratigraphy and aerial distribution. Previously in most parts of the Sulaymaniyah, it is not mapped and its outcrops combined with Balambo Formation while in the present study it is differentiated, mapped in the field on the Qaywan anticline and its problems discussed in details with a suggestion of solutions. For laboratory studies, 31 samples are taken on the Qywan Mountain (anticline) at 23 km north of the Sulaimani city for nannofossils biozonation. This study identified 19 species of the recorded calcareous nannofossils, the studied section reveals three biozones

In this research the results of applying Artificial Neural Networks with modified activation function to perform the online and offline identification of four Degrees of Freedom (4-DOF) Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) manipulator robot will be described. The proposed model of identification strategy consists of a feed-forward neural network with a modified activation function that operates in parallel with the SCARA robot model. Feed-Forward Neural Networks (FFNN) which have been trained online and offline have been used, without requiring any previous knowledge about the system to be identified. The activation function that is used in the hidden layer in FFNN is a modified version of the wavelet function. This approach ha

The tensions and crises and the psychological pressure as well as the rapid changes and great development which is taking place in the present time. And  witnessing community of wars and conflicts that give rise to future concern among members of the community in general and students in particular, as it included the current research a number of chapters, the First chapter contains the research problem, the important goal, then set researcher terminology that has defined and contained in the title of research in the form (concern the future, artistic expression, middle school). The Second chapter included three sections, the first included the nature of adolescence and traits, characteristics and pr

Our research subject (environmental impact in the cultural output of the civilizations of ancient East) the environmental impact on human civilization and how her and adapted to serve in various cultural aspects especially in ancient cultures whether punches or sculptures and other addresses as well as tracing precious stones and raw materials.  It was the environment of the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt and another effective impact in drawing ancient history through human interaction and responsiveness.  The Iraqi environment was marked by poverty and cruelty on the one hand and on the other cultural elements contributed to the civilization in General and research dealing with technical and product sourcing raw materi