Ecosystems provide humans with services that include benefits from food, fresh water, climate regulation, and socio-economic assets. The Mesopotamian marshlands are among the largest wetlands in the Middle East and they provide various benefits. However, ecosystem services of the Marshlands are consistently undervalued in national economic analysis and decision making. This study focusses on the Central Marshes, the first National Park in Iraq, and is the first attempt at valuing a series of ecosystem services from a valuable natural ecosystem in Iraq. We adopted the Toolkit for Ecosystem Services Site-Based Assessment (TESSA) for the determination of biophysical and economic values of services at the site level. Data on key ecosystem services (as determined by 30 interviews with residents of the Marshes) included the trading of fish, harvested plants, water buffalo milk, and fodder were collected across six months in 2014. We valued the ecosystem services within the CM (40,000 ha) over a 6-month period to have a total value of 860,078.23 USD. This estimated total value was the sum of 86,637.25 USD from harvested plants, 551,334.80 USD from trading fish, 167, 303.70 USD from trading water buffalo milk, and 54,804.00 USD from trading fodder. The average income per individual in Iraq in 2014 was 6720 USD (World Bank data - https://data.worldbank.org/country/iraq): thus, the CM provided an average salary for 256 people. Our results provided greater understanding of the ecosystem services contributed by the Central Marshes and has highlighted the crucial role of nature in supporting sustainable well-being for humans living in the area. In addition, the results can be used to enhance local policy, to aid management plans of the National park, and to estimate lost and damage that could result from impact of climate change on the area.
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is one of the most widely used methods in statistics to analyze the behavior of one variable compared to another. The data were collected from a sample size of 65 adult males who were nonsmokers, light smokers, or heavy smokers. The aim of this study is to analyze the effects of cigarette smoking on high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) level and determine whether smoking causes a reduction in this level, by using the completely randomized design (CRD) and Kruskal- Wallis method. The results showed that the assumptions of the one- way ANOVA are not satisfied, while, after transforming original data by using log transformation, they are satisfied. From the results, a significantly
... Show MoreVitrifications process one of the important methods to immobilize nuclear waste. In this research nuclear waste (Strontium Oxides) with molecular weight (5%) was immobilized by vitrification methods in two types of borosilicate glass (c-type) which are glass and glass-ceramics. To investigate the physical, chemical and mechanical properties of glass and glass-ceramic after immobilize nuclear waste these samples irradiated by gamma ray radiation. Co-60 was used as gamma a irradiation with dose rate 0.38 kGy/hr for different period of time. It’s found that gamma radiation affected the glass and glass-ceramic properties. From phase analysis by the x-ray diffraction for glass-ceramic samples proved that at doses 343kGy change the cry
... Show MoreAbstract :
The research aims to diagnose some of the negative phenomena
( Counterfiting , Pettifogging , Embezzlement ) that have been detected over the past ( 2010 – 2014 ), a fixed-term part of the national strategy for the fight against corruption launched by the Joint Council for the fight against corruption in Iraq and measuring the application of government control according to the American standard GAO standards and identifying the potential for the application of those standards gap. It has been collecting data and information of special issues of corruption reports and meeting with (42) employees and the use of a checklist has been prepared for thi
The research aims to study the contribution of tax information systems to increase tax revenues, and to identify how efficiently used information systems currently by the tax authority and their effectiveness in the detection of irregularities by the tax payers such as the cleclaration of incorrect statements that do not show real results of their business activities or hide information from sources related to their income subject to tax, which would negatively affect the outcome of tax revenues and thus damage important sourse of the public treasury of the states resources. The data of research was collected by studying and analysing the tax information systems used by the General Commission of taxs and its branches and a number of prac
... Show MoreThe attention of civil society organizations, governments and international non-governmental organizations in recent years has focused on the acute practices adopted by companies with the aim of reducing the tax burden, and the results of these practices have a negative impact on the tax revenues that the state uses to finance public needsThe aim of the research is to measure the impact of the voluntary disclosure of companies on tax planning for the period from 2011 to 2015 and the research community is in the General Tax Authority. The research sample is 6 companies within the private sector in the financial, banking, insurance and industrial fields. The research was based on a special model to measure the optional disclosure,
... Show MoreThis research aims to study the effect of microwave furnace heat on the mechanical properties and fatigue life of aluminum alloy (AA 2024-T3). Four conditions were used inside microwave furnace (specimens subjected to heat as dry for 30 and 60min. and specimens subjected to heat as wet (water) for 30 and 60 min.), and compared all results with original alloy (AA 2024-T3). Tensile, fatigue, hardness and surface roughness tests were used in this investigation. It is found that hardness of dry conditions is higher than wet conditions and it increases with increasing of time duration inside microwave furnace for dry and wet conditions. Also, tensile strength has the same behavior of hardness, but it increases with decreasing
... Show MoreThe substrate's nature plays an important role in the characteristics of semiconductor films because of the thermal and lattice mismatching between the film and the substrate. In this study, tin sulfide (SnS) nanostructured thin films were grown on different substrates (polyester, glass, and silicon) using a simple and low-cost chemical bath deposition technique. The structural, morphological, and optical properties of the grown thin films were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and ultraviolet-visible-near infrared (UV-Vis-NIR) spectroscopy. The XRD and FESEM results of the prepared films revealed that each film is polycrystalline and exhibits both orthorhombic and cubic stru
... Show MoreBackground: Transitional cell carcinoma of the urinary bladder is one of the important malignancies in both sex groups .It is considered as a heterogenous neoplasm with different
biological behavior, in which the majority are early non invasive with tendency for recurrence and some may progress to invasive tumor. An important clinicopathological features are ,the tumor stage and histological grade which are used as prognostic parameters of the tumor and play an important role in therapy. Due to the subjectivity of the histological grading , the reproducibility was low . Many studies showed the value of quantitative analysis of the tumor as an important method in determining the recurrence of the tumor and
The progress of science in all its branches and levels made great civilized changes of
our societies in the present day, it's a result of the huge amount of knowledge, the increase of
number of students, and the increase of community awareness proportion of the importance of
education in schools and universities, it became necessary for us as educators to look at
science from another point of view based on the idea of scientific development of curricula
and teaching methods and means of education, and for the studying class environment as a
whole, by computer and internet use in education to the emergence of the term education
technology, which relies on the use of modern technology to provide educational content to<