This paper examines the change in planning pattern In Lebanon, which relies on vehicles as a semi-single mode of transport, and directing it towards re-shaping the city and introducing concepts of "smooth or flexible" mobility in its schemes; the concept of a "compact city" with an infrastructure based on a flexible mobility culture. Taking into consideration environmental, economical and health risks of the existing model, the paper focuses on the four foundations of the concepts of "city based on culture flexible mobility, "and provides a SWOT analysis to encourage for a shift in the planning methodology.

The tourism industry has become, currently, an art, an industry and a science. It is also one of the components that make up touristic regions. Tourist attractions are no longer the exclusive visits of museums and archeological sites, but also involve other service facilities. It is, therefore, imperative that the authorities should become aware of the degradation of tourist resorts and prevent them from getting worse. Moreover, the authorities should take a set of decisions concerning the protection of the urban aspect with its historical, social, and environmental dimensions, as well as, adapting it to the modern requirements that can bring comfort to the citizens and tourists at physical and psychological levels.

In this paper, a dynamic investigation is done for strip, rectangular and square machine foundation at the top surface of two-layer dry sand with various states (i.e., loose on medium sand and dense on medium sand). The dynamic investigation is performed numerically using finite element programming, PLAXIS 3D. The soil is expected as a versatile totally plastic material that complies with the Mohr-Coulomb yield criterion. A harmonic load is applied at the base with an amplitude of 6 kPa at a frequency of (2 and 6) Hz, and seismic is applied with acceleration – time input of earthquake hit Halabjah city north of Iraq. A parametric study is done to evaluate the influence of changing L/B ratio (Length=12,6,3 m and width=3 m), type of sand

This research utilized natural asphalt (NA) deposits from sulfur springs in western Iraq. Laboratory tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of an asphalt mixture incorporating NA and verify its suitability for local pavement applications. To achieve this, a combination of two types of NA, namely soft SNA and hard HNA, was blended to create a binder known as Type HSNA. The resulting HSNA exhibited a penetration grade that adhered to Iraqi specifications. Various percentages of NA (20%, 40%, 60%, and 80%) were added to petroleum asphalt. The findings revealed enhanced physical properties of HSNA, which also satisfied the requirements outlined in the Iraqi specifications for asphalt cement.

Consequently, HS

This research utilized natural asphalt (NA) deposits from sulfur springs in western Iraq. Laboratory tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of an asphalt mixture incorporating NA and verify its suitability for local pavement applications. To achieve this, a combination of two types of NA, namely soft SNA and hard HNA, was blended to create a binder known as Type HSNA. The resulting HSNA exhibited a penetration grade that adhered to Iraqi specifications. Various percentages of NA (20%, 40%, 60%, and 80%) were added to petroleum asphalt. The findings revealed enhanced physical properties of HSNA, which also satisfied the requirements outlined in the Iraqi specifications for asphalt cement. Consequently, HSNA can serve as an

Seepage through earth dams is one of the most popular causes for earth dam collapse due to internal granule movement and seepage transfer. In earthen dams, the core plays a vital function in decreasing seepage through the dam body and lowering the phreatic line. In this research, an alternative soil to the clay soil used in the dam core has been proposed by conducting multiple experiments to test the permeability of silty and sandy soil with different additives materials. Then the selected sandy soil model was used to represent the dam experimentally, employing a permeability device to measure the amount of water that seeps through the dam's body and to represent the seepage line. A numerical model was adopted using Geo-Studio software i

Fabrication of porous clay refractory insulating specimens from Iraqi kaolin with different percentage of Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) waste crumbs additions were investigated. After mixing and forming by hand molding, the specimens was dried and fired at 1300 oC. The structural, physical, mechanical and thermal properties of the refractory insulating products were measured. Maximum addition of EPS (1.25 wt%) lead to reduce the linear shrinkage to less than 1.7% and increased apparent porosity up to 50 %. As well as, the density, Modulus of rupture and thermal conductivity were reduced to 1.39 g/cm3, 4.1 MPa and 0.21 W/m.K, respectively. The final outcome, addition of EPS showed good results in the formation of pores without distorting the

TiO2 thin films were deposited by reactive d.c magnetron sputtering method on a glass substrate with various ratio of gas flow (Oxygen /Argon) (50/50, 100/50 and 150/50) at substrate temperature 573K. It can be observe that the optical energy gap of TiO2 thin films dependent on the ratio of gas flow (oxygen/argon), it varies between (3.45eV-3.57eV) also it is seen that the optical constants (α, n, K, εr and εi ) has been varied with the change of the ratio of gas flow (Oxygen /Argon).

Detection of early clinical keratoconus (KCN) is a challenging task, even for expert clinicians. In this study, we propose a deep learning (DL) model to address this challenge. We first used Xception and InceptionResNetV2 DL architectures to extract features from three different corneal maps collected from 1371 eyes examined in an eye clinic in Egypt. We then fused features using Xception and InceptionResNetV2 to detect subclinical forms of KCN more accurately and robustly. We obtained an area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC) of 0.99 and an accuracy range of 97–100% to distinguish normal eyes from eyes with subclinical and established KCN. We further validated the model based on an independent dataset with

The gypseous soil may be one of the problems that face the engineers especially when it used as a foundation for hydraulic structures, roads, and other structures. Gypseous soil is strong soil and has good properties when it is dry, but the problem arises when building hydraulic installations or heavy buildings on this soil after wetting the water to the soil by raising the water table level from any source or from rainfall which leads to dissolve the gypsum content.

Cement-stabilized soil has been successfully used as a facing or lining for earth channel, highway embankments and drainage ditches to reduce the risk of erosion and collapsibility of soil. This study is deliberate the treatment of gypseous soil by u