The goal of the research is to develop a sustainable rating system for roadway projects in Iraq for all of the life cycle stages of the projects which are (planning, design, construction and operation and maintenance). This paper investigates the criteria and its weightings of the suggested roadway rating system depending on sustainable planning activities. The methodology started in suggesting a group of sustainable criteria for planning stage and then suggesting weights from (1-5) points for each one of it. After that data were collected by using a closed questionnaire directed to the roadway experts group in order to verify the criteria weightings based on the relative importance of the roadway related impacts

Abstract Candida albicans is a commensal fungal pathogen that grows in yeast and hyphal forms in the human gut. C. albicans causes mucosal and cutaneous diseases that can result in significant mortality following systematic infections and it also exhibits drug resistance. Zebrafish have been an excellent model to investigate C. albicans infections because of their transparency and the availability of many transgenic lines. However, there is a limitation in using zebrafish as a model because the fish embryos cannot survive at 37°C therefore it is not suitable for studying Candida infections at physiological relevant human body temperature. In this thesis, the normal embryonic development of Arabian killifish (A. dispar) is investigated, rev

This research takes up address the practical side by taking case studies for construction projects that include the various Iraqi governorates, as it includes conducting a field survey to identify the impact of parametric costs on construction projects and compare them with what was reached during the analysis and the extent of their validity and accuracy, as well as adopting the approach of personal interviews to know the reality of the state of construction projects. The results showed, after comparing field data and its measurement in construction projects for the sectors (public and private), the correlation between the expected and actual cost change was (97.8%), and this means that the data can be adopted in the re

The aim of this paper is to design a PID controller based on an on-line tuning bat optimization algorithm for the step-down DC/DC buck converter system which is used in the battery operation of the mobile applications. In this paper, the bat optimization algorithm has been utilized to obtain the optimal parameters of the PID controller as a simple and fast on-line tuning technique to get the best control action for the system. The simulation results using (Matlab Package) show the robustness and the effectiveness of the proposed control system in terms of obtaining a suitable voltage control action as a smooth and unsaturated state of the buck converter input voltage of ( ) volt that will stabilize the buck converter sys

Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) has proved to be an effective and accurate method for diagnostic prediction over the years. This article focuses on the development of an automated CAD system with the intent to perform diagnosis as accurately as possible. Deep learning methods have been able to produce impressive results on medical image datasets. This study employs deep learning methods in conjunction with meta-heuristic algorithms and supervised machine-learning algorithms to perform an accurate diagnosis. Pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) or auto-encoder are used for feature extraction, whereas feature selection is performed using an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm. Ant colony optimization helps to search for the bes

Soil is the cardinal resource for agricultural crops. Healthy soil will produce healthy plants. Since healthy soil is the important goal for the farmers, they need to select the best tillage system to achieve that goal. There are two main types of tillage systems. Conservation tillage (no-tillage farming) uses agricultural machinery that performs a double function; tillage and seed farming simultaneously. In contrast, conventional tillage farming uses multiple agricultural machines to till and seed the soil. The farmers in the northern governorates of Iraq have used the conservation farming system for a long time. However, the farmers who live in the middle and southern governorates in Iraq use conventional tillage farming. Because most of

Wildfire risk has globally increased during the past few years due to several factors. An efficient and fast response to wildfires is extremely important to reduce the damaging effect on humans and wildlife. This work introduces a methodology for designing an efficient machine learning system to detect wildfires using satellite imagery. A convolutional neural network (CNN) model is optimized to reduce the required computational resources. Due to the limitations of images containing fire and seasonal variations, an image augmentation process is used to develop adequate training samples for the change in the forest’s visual features and the seasonal wind direction at the study area during the fire season. The selected CNN model (Mob

The research aimed to identify smart management capabilities of secondary school principals in education directorates in Baghdad according to the administrative intelligent and leadership competencies. The study used incentives as a descriptive method, by analyzing five main areas of smart management: strategic planning, self-awareness, skills, organization and culture. A purposive sample consisting of 102 secondary school principals from education directorates (Rusafa1) and (Karkh2), was taken to fill questionnaire the latter representing a complete sample of the target population. validated has been built an advanced measurement tool composed of 56 items across the five domains of strategic planning (21%), self-awareness (21%), culture (2