The rapid sprawl in urban areas caused by excessive production and consumption of goods (as driven by local poor social choices) has inevitably resulted in a major burden due to environmental degradation worldwide. Unfortunately, these traditional models of urban planning fail to properly account for the intricacies that permeate a modern city and are deficient in terms of their approach as they shape themselves within an environment largely divorced from natural systems, resulting in vast mismanagement of resources, guiding cities down trajectories where growth destroys both physical and cultural landscapes. As cities suffer from increasing scarcity, we advocate for regeneration and resilience to be embedded in advanced urban design approa

Encasing glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) beam with reinforced concrete (RC) improves stability, prevents buckling of the web, and enhances the fire resistance efficiency. This paper provides experimental and numerical investigations on the flexural performance of RC specimens composite with encased pultruded GFRP I-sections. The effect of using shear studs to improve the composite interaction between the GFRP beam and concrete was explored. Three specimens were tested under three-point loading. The deformations, strains in the GFRP beams, and slippages between the GFRP beams and concrete were recorded. The embedded GFRP beam enhanced the peak loads by 65% and 51% for the composite specimens with and without shear connectors,

Water quality planning relies on Biochemical Oxygen Demand BOD. BOD testing takes five days. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is increasingly used for water resource forecasting. This work designed a PSO technique for estimating everyday BOD at Al-Rustumiya wastewater treatment facility inlet. Al-Rustumiya wastewater treatment plant provided 702 plant-scale data sets during 2012-2022. The PSO model uses the daily data of the water quality parameters, including chemical oxygen demand (COD), chloride (Cl^-), suspended solid (SS), total dissolved solids (TDS), and pH, to determine how each variable affects the daily incoming BOD. PSO and multiple linear regression (MLR) findings are compared, and their perfor

In this study, the flexural performance of a new composite beam–slab system filled with concrete material was investigated, where this system was mainly prepared from lightweight cold-formed steel sections of a beam and a deck slab for carrying heavy floor loads as another concept of a conventional composite system with a lower cost impact. For this purpose, seven samples of a profile steel sheet–dry board deck slab (PSSDB/PDS) carried by a steel cold-formed C-purlins beam (CB) were prepared and named “composite CBPDS specimen”, which were tested under a static bending load. Specifically, the effects of the profile steel sheet (PSS) direction (parallel or perpendicular to the span of the specimen) using different C-purlins c

This project presents an enhanced Iraqi vehicle plate identification system, incorporating digital processing technologies and the XOR Auto-Associative Memory advanced associative memory algorithm, towards a fast and efficient performance under diverse conditions of imagery. The system consists of three major stages: identification of the panel area, or localization, using edge transformations and morphological operations; symbol segmentation, or segmentation, based on horizontal and vertical projections for the exact extraction of numbers and letters; and finally, recognition use of XOR operations and a binary distance criterion known as Hamming Distance. The model was tested on 420 images of panels in different scenarios of lighting

This study presents a linguistic analysis of how Russian and American mainstream media and official statements deployed speech acts of accusation during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Using Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1976) as the framework. The study analyzes 50 texts of English-language official statements and media headlines from both sides. In this research utterances are categorized into assertives, expressives, directives, commissives, and declarations, and analyzes their pragmatic force in shaping narratives. The analysis reveals contrasts in tone and rhetorical strategy: U.S. officials and media overwhelmingly use assertive accusations and expressive condemnations to morally indict Russia, while Russian counterpa

The aim of the research is to know the level of mental motivation among students of the Arabic language departments in the Faculties of Education in the universities of Baghdad Governorate and its relationship to their attitudes towards the profession, and the level of orientation towards the profession among students of the Arabic language departments in the Faculties of Education. And the correlational relationship between mental motivation and career orientation among students of Arabic language departments in the Faculties of Education, and the current research is determined by students of Arabic language departments in the Faculties of Education and the universities (Education Ibn Rushd-  University of Baghdad, Education- &nbsp

In this work, two different laser dye solutions were used to host highly-pure silicon nitride nanoparticles as scattering centers to fabricate random gain media. The laser dye was dissolved in three different solvents (ethanol, methanol and acetone) and the final results were obtained for methanol only. The silicon nitride nanoparticles were synthesized by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique with average particle size of 35 nm. The random gain medium was made as a solid rod with high spectral efficiency and low production cost. Optical emission with narrow linewidth was detected at 532-534 nm as 9 mg of silicon nitride nanoparticles were added to the 10 -5 M dye solution. The FWHM of 0.3 and 3.52 nm was determined for Rhodamine B and

Background: Generally, genetic disorders are a leading cause of spontaneous abortion, neonatal death, increased morbidity and mortality in children and adults as well. They a significant health care and psychosocial burden for the patient, the family, the healthcare system and the community as a whole. Chromosomal abnormalities occur much more frequently than is generally appreciated. It is estimated that approximately 1 of 200 newborn infants had some form of chromosomal abnormality. The figure is much higher in fetuses that do not survive to term. It is estimated that in 50% of first trimester abortions, the fetus has a chromosomal abnormality. Aim of the study: This study aims to shed some light on the results of chromosomal studies per