Measurement of construction performance is essential to a clear image of the present situation. This monitoring by the management team is necessary to identify locations where performance is exceptionally excellent or poor and to identify the primary reasons so that the lessons gained may be exported to the firm and its progress strengthened. This research attempts to construct an integrated mathematical model utilizing one of the recent methodologies for dealing with the fuzzy representation of experts’ knowledge and judgment considering hesitancy called spherical fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (SFAHP) method to assess the contractor’s performance per the project performance parameters (cost, schedule, quality, leadership, and change management). At the same time, most project control systems are currently applied through software like Primavera P6 or MS Project. These look at a project’s cost and schedule status by following the earned value analysis for finding the performance. Based on decision makers’ preferences, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) may be used to arrive at the optimum conclusion. AHP approaches are discussed, including AHP, grey-AHP, fuzzy-AHP, and SFAHP weights comparison. Calculation results showed that the spherical fuzzy approach differs significantly from the other approaches where it considers the decision maker’s hesitation when making linguistic multicriteria decisions and then, as a result, recommends applying periodically for performance measurement. This model can be viewed as a valuable way to help the decision-making stakeholders in the construction sector do the best job about critical issues at a suitable time.
Conventional dosage forms for topical and transdermal drug delivery have several disadvantages related mainly to its poor skin permeation and patient compliance. Many approaches have been developed to improve these dosage forms. Film forming drug delivery systems represents a recent advancement in this field. It provides improved patient compliance with enhanced skin permeation of drugs. In its simplest form, these consist of a polymeric solution, usually in a supersaturated state, in a suitable solvent. A plasticizer is usually added to improve the flexibility and enhance the tensile strength to the film. It is also possible to control and sustain the drug release from the films by controlling the polymeric content, concentration o
... Show MoreThe maximization of the net present value of the investment in oil field improvements is greatly aided by the optimization of well location, which plays a significant role in the production of oil. However, using of optimization methods in well placement developments is exceedingly difficult since the well placement optimization scenario involves a large number of choice variables, objective functions, and restrictions. In addition, a wide variety of computational approaches, both traditional and unconventional, have been applied in order to maximize the efficiency of well installation operations. This research demonstrates how optimization approaches used in well placement have progressed since the last time they were examined. Fol
... Show MoreZainab M. Al-Bahrani Department of Oral Diagnosis, College of Dentistry, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq.Corresponding author: Zainab M. Al-Bahra...
Speech is the essential way to interact between humans or between human and machine. However, it is always contaminated with different types of environment noise. Therefore, speech enhancement algorithms (SEA) have appeared as a significant approach in speech processing filed to suppress background noise and return back the original speech signal. In this paper, a new efficient two-stage SEA with low distortion is proposed based on minimum mean square error sense. The estimation of clean signal is performed by taking the advantages of Laplacian speech and noise modeling based on orthogonal transform (Discrete Krawtchouk-Tchebichef transform) coefficients distribution. The Discrete Kra
Background: Lung cancer is responsible for the most
cancer deaths in both men and women throughout the
world. Deaths from lung cancer (160,440 in 2004,
according to the National Cancer Institute) exceed the
number of deaths from four other major cancers combined
(breast, colon, pancreatic and prostate).
Objective: To assess the behavior and the approaches of
lung cancer in a sample of Iraqi patients.
Methods: This descriptive retrospective study was
performed using the records of 390 patients proved to have
lung cancer that had attending the Thoracic Surgery
Department of Surgical Specialties Hospital-Medical City
\Baghdad for the period from January, 1st
, 2001 to
December, 31st
,2002.
Res
Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) has long been recognized as a technology that provides future proof bandwidth [1], but has generally been too expensive to implement on a wide scale. However, reductions in the cost of electro-optic components and improvements in the handling of fiber optics now make FTTH a cost effective solution in many situations. The transition to FTTH in the access network is also a benefit for both consumers and service providers because it opens up the near limitless capacity of the core long-haul network to the local user. In this paper individual passive optical components, transceivers, and fibers has been put together to form a complete FTTH network. Then the implementation of the under construction Baghdad/Al
... Show MoreIn this paper we present the theoretical foundation of forward error analysis of numerical algorithms under;• Approximations in "built-in" functions.• Rounding errors in arithmetic floating-point operations.• Perturbations of data.The error analysis is based on linearization method. The fundamental tools of the forward error analysis are system of linear absolute and relative a prior and a posteriori error equations and associated condition numbers constituting optimal of possible cumulative round – off errors. The condition numbers enable simple general, quantitative bounds definitions of numerical stability. The theoretical results have been applied a Gaussian elimination, and have proved to be very effective means of both a prior
... Show MoreUndoubtedly, rutting in asphalt concrete pavement is considered a major dilemma in terms of pavement performance and safety faced by road users as well as the road authorities. Rutting is a bowl-shaped depression in the wheel paths that develop gradually with the increasing number of load applications. Heavy axle loadings besides the high pavement summer temperature enhance the problem of rutting. According to the AASHTO design equation for flexible pavements, a 1.1 in rut depth will reduce the present serviceability index of relatively new pavement, having no other distress, from 4.2 to 2.5. With this amount of drop in serviceability, the entire life of the pavement in effect has been lost. Therefore, it is crucial to look at the mechani
... Show MoreA simple, environmentally benign, cost-effective, and sensitive colorimetric determination for the pharmaceutical drug dexamethasone sodium phosphate (DXP) has been developed by the formation of a colored complex with fluoranil. The process was sensitive and linear over the range 1 to 40 μg/mL, excellent correlation coefficient 0.9989, recovery% 99.80 ± 1.3, limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were 0.23 and 0.9 μg/mL, respectively, and good RSD ~1.63%. The experimental conditions were optimized after an intensive study. The approach was validated statistically for the quantification of the analyte in its pure and/or pharmaceutical form. Despite the proposed approach is selective, it still can be applied for
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