The effect of the magnetic abrasive finishing (MAF) method on the temperature rise (TR), and material removal rate (MRR) has been investigated in this paper. Sixteen runs were to determine the optimum temperature in the contact area (between the abrasive powder and surface of workpiece) and the MRR according to Taguchi orthogonal array (OA). Four variable technological parameters (cutting speed, finishing time, working gap, and the current in the inductor) with four levels for each parameter were used, the matrix is known as a L16 (4⁴) OA. The signal to noise ratio (S/N) ratio and analysis of the variance (ANOVA) were utilized to analyze the results using (MINITAB17) to find the optimum condition and identify the significant p

In the field of construction project management, time and cost are the most important factors to be considered in planning every project, and their relationship is complex. The total cost for each project is the sum of the direct and indirect cost. Direct cost commonly represents labor, materials, equipment, etc.
Indirect cost generally represents overhead cost such as supervision, administration, consultants, and interests. Direct cost grows at an increasing rate as the project time is reduced from its original planned time. However, indirect cost continues for the life of the project and any reduction in project time means a reduction in indirect cost. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the time and cost for completing construc

Several attempts have been made to modify the quasi-Newton condition in order to obtain rapid convergence with complete properties (symmetric and positive definite) of the inverse of  Hessian matrix (second derivative of the objective function). There are many unconstrained optimization methods that do not generate positive definiteness of the inverse of Hessian matrix. One of those methods is the symmetric rank 1( H-version) update (SR1 update), where this update satisfies the quasi-Newton condition and the symmetric property of inverse of Hessian matrix, but does not preserve the positive definite property of the inverse of Hessian matrix where the initial inverse of Hessian matrix is positive definiteness. The positive definite prope

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive airflow limitation that is preventable but not curable. It is associated with persistent symptoms that cause a considerable burden on individual productivity at work, and daily activities, and reduced quality of life, also burdening the healthcare system and society. Objectives: The study aims to measure the burden of COPD on patients in terms of daily activities and work productivity. It also seeks to investigate some inflammatory biomarkers' levels and their correlation with selected outcomes. Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional study on 120 stable COPD patients who were diagnosed and treated according to the GOLD guidelines at Kirkuk General Hospital's

In this work, results from an optical technique (laser speckle technique) for measuring surface roughness was done by using statistical properties of speckle pattern from the point of view of computer image texture analysis. Four calibration relationships were used to cover wide range of measurement with the same laser speckle technique. The first one is based on intensity contrast of the speckle, the second is based on analysis of speckle binary image,  the third is on size of speckle pattern spot, and the latest one is based on characterization of the energy feature of the gray level co-occurrence matrices for the speckle pattern. By these calibration relationships surface roughness of an object surface can be evaluated within the

Bacteria strain H8, which produces high amount of exopolysaccharide (EPS), was isolated from soil, and identified as strain of Azotobacter chrococcum by its biochemical /physiological characteristics, EPS was extracted, partially purified and used as bioflocculant. The biochemical analysis of the partially purified EPS revealed that it was an alginate. analysis of EPS by Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) show that the -OH groups present in bioflocculant are clearly seen at 3433.06 cm-1, the peaks attributed to the -CH3 groups present at 2916.17 cm-1 , and some distinct peaks such as carboxyl group showed strong absorption bands at 1604.66 cm-1, 1411.80 cm-1 and 1303.79 cm-1 indicate the chemical structure of alginate. The effe