The fish assemblage in the East Hammar marsh was studied during December 2009 to May 2010. The fish fauna of the marsh consisted of 17 native, 23 marine (49%) and seven alien species. The dominant species were Liza abu (14.6%), Carassius auratus (13.4%) and Thryssa mystax (11.2%). The resident species formed 44.7%, occasional species 36.1% and seasonal species 19.2% of the total number of fish species. Fish species diversity index ranged from 1.28 to 2.61, richness from 1.98 to 4.50 and evenness from 0.45 to 0.78. Salinity ranged from 1.45 to 7.74‰. The increase in the proportion of marine species (49%) in the fish assemblage due to marine waters progress from Arabian Gulf had an impact on the values of ecological indices and the

The design of safe pedestrian facilities usually depends on the assessment of pedestrian characteristics and behavior. In this investigation, pedestrian walking speed through the religious occasion have been monitored at three locations, Al- Kadhimiya (Imam AL-Kadim), Najaf and Karbala (Imam AL-Husain) holy shrines. Video captures of the pedestrian through their walking to the two holy shrines have been prepared and analyzed for walking speed, gender, age groups, and clothing tradition. The pedestrian sample size is 468, 501, and 447 for Al- Kadhimiya, Karbala, and Najaf respectively. When the gender is taken into consideration, it can be noted that the walking speed of male and female pedestrian is (0.97, 1.68, and 1.63

The depreciation of the Iraqi dinar against the US dollar, reaching low levels and causing disruptions in the local markets, has had detrimental effects on individuals and companies, particularly those with limited income and the poor. The local currency approached around 1600 dinars per dollar, after the official exchange rate had stabilized at around 1450 dinars per US dollar. This depreciation in the value of the Iraqi dinar can be attributed to financial speculation among currency traders, which directly affected exchange rates and illicit dollar smuggling operations. Bank transfers are also important alongside financial transactions, especially in light of current economic developments in the 21st century. To prevent currency s

Public-private partnership (PPP) has been used over the past 20-30 years by governments in developed countries to meet the public demand for infrastructural services. In Iraq, the PPP concept is comparatively new to the Government of Iraq (GoI), where the government has historically taken most of the responsibility for providing public services. There are few PPP projects in Iraq. However, the number is increasing. Recently the Iraqi market has experienced a number of attempts of PPP in different sectors, especially after the new investment law in 2006. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the investment environment in Iraq and to indicate the main factors affecting PPP in particular for infrastructure projects. Some literature review and

AbstractBackgroundLeishmaniasis is endemic in Iraq, where both cutaneous and visceral forms of the disease are reported.ObjectivesTo determine the prevalence of cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) and to identify associations of CL with age, sex, season, and provinces depending on some demographic and climatic aspects.MethodsThis study is retrospective and includes reported cases of infections using the available surveillance database taken from the Iraqi Ministry of Health for the years 2011, 2012, and 2013 for all provinces of Iraq.ResultsMen and boys were found to be at higher risk for CL compared with women and girls. The majority of cases were recorded among those in age groups 5–14 and 15–45 years old. Most cases were recorded from lowla

conventional FCM algorithm does not fully utilize the spatial information in the image. In this research, we use a FCM algorithm that incorporates spatial information into the membership function for clustering. The spatial function is the summation of the membership functions in the neighborhood of each pixel under consideration. The advantages of the method are that it is less
sensitive to noise than other techniques, and it yields regions more homogeneous than those of other methods. This technique is a powerful method for noisy image segmentation. 

This study aims at identifying the extent of SMS usage and understanding the role it plays in satisfying users' needs and motivations. In order to achieve this aim, an analytical descriptive method was adopted by conducting a field survey among students at Petra University.

The study resulted in many conclusions, the most important of which is that using SMS meets the students' cognitive, social and communicational needs and desires, the highest being communicating with friends at 75%, followed by exchanging songs and videos at 52%, as well as exchanging photos at 45%. In regards to their motivation for using text messaging, forgetting daily problems scored highest at 81.4% and spending free time followed at 77.4%. This proves th