Millions of pilgrims and visitors from numerous parts of the world flock to Karbala (one of the most prominent ideological and religious places in central Iraq) each year to visit the holy shrines in Karbala due to their sanctity. Many improvements have been made to the Two Holy Shrines (THS), the Shrines of Imam Husayn and Imam Abbas, and the area between them (ATHS), due to the high temperatures in this region and to improve pedestrian thermal comfort. Studies on improving outdoor thermal comfort in Karbala are scarce. Hence, this research aims to look into historical and current architectural changes and how they affect thermal comfort. On the hottest summer day, the ENVI-met software program was used to simulate the building des

The electrocardiogram (ECG) is the recording of the electrical potential of the heart versus time. The analysis of ECG signals has been widely used in cardiac pathology to detect heart disease. The ECGs are non-stationary signals which are often contaminated by different types of noises from different sources. In this study, simulated noise models were proposed for the power-line interference (PLI), electromyogram (EMG) noise, base line wander (BW), white Gaussian noise (WGN) and composite noise. For suppressing noises and extracting the efficient morphology of an ECG signal, various processing techniques have been recently proposed. In this paper, wavelet transform (WT) is performed for noisy ECG signals. The graphical user interface (GUI)

This study investigates the performance of granular dead anaerobic sludge (GDAS) bio-sorbent as permeable reactive barrier in removing phenol from a simulated contaminated shallow groundwater. Batch tests have been performed to characterize the equilibrium sorption properties of the GDAS and sandy soil in phenol-containing aqueous solutions. The results of GDAS tests proved that the best values of operating parameters, which achieve the maximum removal efficiency of phenol (=85%), at equilibrium contact time (=3 hr), initial pH of the solution (=5), initial phenol concentration (=50 mg/l), GDAS dosage (=0.5 g/100 ml), and agitation speed (=250 rpm). Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis proved that the carboxylic acid, aromatic, alk

Zubair Formation is one of the richest petroleum systems in Southern Iraq. This formation is composed mainly of sandstones interbedded with shale sequences, with minor streaks of limestone and siltstone. Borehole collapse is one of the most critical challenges that continuously appear in drilling and production operations. Problems associated with borehole collapse, such as tight hole while tripping, stuck pipe and logging tools, hole enlargement, poor log quality, and poor primary cement jobs, are the cause of the majority of the nonproductive time (NPT) in the Zubair reservoir developments. Several studies released models predicting the onset of borehole collapse and the amount of enlargement of the wellbore cross-section. However, assump

Generally, radiologists analyse the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) by visual inspection to detect and identify the presence of tumour or abnormal tissue in brain MR images. The huge number of such MR images makes this visual interpretation process, not only laborious and expensive but often erroneous. Furthermore, the human eye and brain sensitivity to elucidate such images gets reduced with the increase of number of cases, especially when only some slices contain information of the affected area. Therefore, an automated system for the analysis and classification of MR images is mandatory. In this paper, we propose a new method for abnormality detection from T1-Weighted MRI of human head scans using three planes, including axial plane, co

Feature selection (FS) constitutes a series of processes used to decide which relevant features/attributes to include and which irrelevant features to exclude for predictive modeling. It is a crucial task that aids machine learning classifiers in reducing error rates, computation time, overfitting, and improving classification accuracy. It has demonstrated its efficacy in myriads of domains, ranging from its use for text classification (TC), text mining, and image recognition. While there are many traditional FS methods, recent research efforts have been devoted to applying metaheuristic algorithms as FS techniques for the TC task. However, there are few literature reviews concerning TC. Therefore, a comprehensive overview was systematicall

This article showcases the development and utilization of a side-polished fiber optic sensor that can identify altered refractive index levels within a glucose solution through the investigation of the surface Plasmon resonance (SPR) effect. The aim was to enhance efficiency by means of the placement of a 50 nm-thick layer of gold at the D-shape fiber sensing area. The detector was fabricated by utilizing a silica optical fiber (SOF), which underwent a cladding stripping process that resulted in three distinct lengths, followed by a polishing method to remove a portion of the fiber diameter and produce a cross-sectional D-shape. During experimentation with glucose solution, the side-polished fiber optic sensor revealed an adept detection