For over a century, the global consumption of asphalt binder in asphalt mixture production has been substantial. In the Heet region (west of Iraq), two distinct forms of natural asphalt (NA) deposits exist: rock asphalt and sulfur spring asphalt. This study focused on using NA sourced from sulfur springs. The aim was to investigate the potential of incorporating NA into local asphalt mixtures. To achieve this, NA was heated to 163°C for varying durations. After heat treatment, laboratory tests were conducted on NA. The findings suggest that by heating NA for 20 hours, it conforms to Iraqi specifications in terms of physical properties. Furthermore, compared to conventional petroleum asphalt, treated NA showed greater resistance to temperature fluctuations, making it ideal for hotter climates. The study also found that NA enhances mechanical properties significantly. Specifically, the NA mixture recorded the highest indirect tensile strength, with a tensile strength ratio of 81.2%, a slight increase of 0.37% over traditional mixes. In summary, NA mixtures exhibit commendable performance. Given its abundance and affordability in Iraq, after considering heat treatment costs and environmental impact, NA holds promise for the future of asphalt concrete production for the construction of flexible pavement.
Composite materials are widely used in the engineered assets as aerospace structures, marine and air navigation owing to their high strength/weight ratios. Detection and identification of damage in the composite structures are considered as an important part of monitoring and repairing of structural systems during the service to avoid instantaneous failure. Effective cost and reliability are essential during the process of detecting. The Lamb wave method is an effective and sensitive technique to tiny damage and can be applied for structural health monitoring using low energy sensors; it can provide good information about the condition of the structure during its operation by analyzing the propagation of the wave in the
... Show MoreType 2 diabetes mellitus which abbreviate as T2DM is a complex endocrine and metabolic disorder arisingfrom genetic and environmental factors interaction which in turn induce various degrees of insulin functionalalteration on peripheral tissues. Globally, T2DM has develop into a public health problem. Therefore, Thestudy included (75) patients(37 female and 38 males) suffering from T2DM who visit al-kadhimiya teachinghospital with age range 20-80 years and (70) as healthy controls with age range 20-70 years. All studiedgroups were evaluated CMV IgG by ELISA,B. urea, S. Creatinine, cholesterol and triglyceride the resultsshowed that B.urea, S.creatinine and serum cholesterol showed a non-significant differences between studiedgroup,
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Due to the continuing demand for larger bandwidth, the optical transport becoming general in the access network. Using optical fiber technologies, the communications infrastructure becomes powerful, providing very high speeds to transfer a high capacity of data. Existing telecommunications infrastructures is currently widely used Passive Optical Network that apply Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and is awaited to play an important role in the future Internet supporting a large diversity of services and next generation networks. This paper presents a design of WDM-PON network, the simulation and analysis of transmission parameters in the Optisystem 7.0 environment for bidirectional traffic. The sim
... Show MoreDue to the continuing demand for larger bandwidth, the optical transport becoming general in the access network. Using optical fiber technologies, the communications infrastructure becomes powerful, providing very high speeds to transfer a high capacity of data. Existing telecommunications infrastructures is currently widely used Passive Optical Network that apply Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and is awaited to play an important role in the future Internet supporting a large diversity of services and next generation networks. This paper presents a design of WDM-PON network, the simulation and analysis of transmission parameters in the Optisystem 7.0 environment for bidirectional traffic. The simulation shows the behavior of optical
... Show MoreAssociation rules mining (ARM) is a fundamental and widely used data mining technique to achieve useful information about data. The traditional ARM algorithms are degrading computation efficiency by mining too many association rules which are not appropriate for a given user. Recent research in (ARM) is investigating the use of metaheuristic algorithms which are looking for only a subset of high-quality rules. In this paper, a modified discrete cuckoo search algorithm for association rules mining DCS-ARM is proposed for this purpose. The effectiveness of our algorithm is tested against a set of well-known transactional databases. Results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing metaheuristic methods.
The convergence speed is the most important feature of Back-Propagation (BP) algorithm. A lot of improvements were proposed to this algorithm since its presentation, in order to speed up the convergence phase. In this paper, a new modified BP algorithm called Speeding up Back-Propagation Learning (SUBPL) algorithm is proposed and compared to the standard BP. Different data sets were implemented and experimented to verify the improvement in SUBPL.
A new human-based heuristic optimization method, named the Snooker-Based Optimization Algorithm (SBOA), is introduced in this study. The inspiration for this method is drawn from the traits of sales elites—those qualities every salesperson aspires to possess. Typically, salespersons strive to enhance their skills through autonomous learning or by seeking guidance from others. Furthermore, they engage in regular communication with customers to gain approval for their products or services. Building upon this concept, SBOA aims to find the optimal solution within a given search space, traversing all positions to obtain all possible values. To assesses the feasibility and effectiveness of SBOA in comparison to other algorithms, we conducte
... Show MoreBackground: Economic Globalization affects work condition by increasing work stress. Chronic work stress ended with burnout syndrome.
Objectives: To estimate the prevalence of burnout syndrome and the association of job title, and violence with it among physicians in Baghdad, and to assess the burnout syndrome at patient and work levels by structured interviews.
Subjects and Methods: A cross section study was conducted on Physicians in Baghdad. Sampling was a multistage, stratified sampling to control the confounders in the design phase. A mixed qualitative and quantitative
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