Metal contents in vegetables are interesting because of issues related to food safety and potential health risks. The availability of these metals in the human body may perform many biochemical functions and some of them linked with various diseases at high levels. The current study aimed to evaluate the concentration of various metals in common local consumed vegetables using ICP-MS. The concentrations of metals in vegetables of tarragon, Bay laurel, dill, Syrian mesquite, vine leaves, thymes, arugula, basil, common purslane and parsley of this study were found to be in the range of, 76-778 for Al, 10-333 for B, 4-119 for Ba, 2812-24645 for Ca, 0.1-0.32 for Co, 201-464 for Fe, 3661-46400 for K, 0.31–1.53 for Li, 860-14330 for Mg, 16.20-71.5 for Mn, 612-4725 for Na and 15.8-46 µg g-1 for Zn. The results revealed that the concentration of Al, B except in Syrian mesquite, Ba, Ca, Fe, K, Mg and Mn in all analysed vegetables is higher than the recommended value, Li is well-within the safe limit, and Co, Na except in dill, arugula and common purslane, Zn are lower than the recommended intake of these elements. From health point of view, the HQ values for Al, Fe (for all vegetables) and Ba (in dill, vine leaves, thymes, arugula, basil, common purslane and parsley) were higher than one, indicating potential non-cancer health risk due to exposure to these metals. Furthermore, the HI value for all vegetables was higher than one, indicating potential non-cancer health risk due to long-term exposure to these metals.
Buildings such as malls, offices, airports and hospitals nowadays have become very complicated which increases the need for a solution that helps people to find their locations in these buildings. GPS or cell signals are commonly used for positioning in an outdoor environment and are not accurate in indoor environment. Smartphones are becoming a common presence in our daily life, also the existing infrastructure, the Wi-Fi access points, which is commonly available in most buildings, has motivated this work to build hybrid mechanism that combines the APs fingerprint together with smartphone barometer sensor readings, to accurately determine the user position inside building floor relative to well-known lan
... Show MoreApplications of remote sensing are important in improving potato production through the broader adoption of precision agriculture. This technology could be useful in decreasing the potential contamination of soil and water due to the over-fertilization of agriculture crops. The objective of this study was to assess the utility of active sensors (Crop Circle™, Holland Scientific, Inc., Lincoln, NE, USA and GreenSeeker™, Trimble Navigation Limited, Sunnyvale, CA, USA) and passive sensors (multispectral imaging with Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAVs)) to predict total potato yield and phosphorus (P) uptake. The experimental design was a randomized complete block with four replications and six P treatments, ranging from 0 to 280 kg P ha−1, as
... Show MoreThe present paper describes and analyses three proposed cogeneration plants include back pressure steam-turbine system, gas turbine system, diesel-engine system, and the present Dura refinery plant. Selected actual operating data are employed for analysis. The same amount of electrical and thermal product outputs is considered for all systems to facilitate comparisons. The theoretical analysis was done according to 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamic. The results demonstrate that exergy analysis is a useful tool in performance analysis of cogeneration systems and permits meaningful comparisons of different cogeneration systems based on their merits, also the result showed that the back pressure steam-turbine is more efficient than other pro
... Show MoreDrag reduction (DR) techniques are used to improve the flow by spare the flow energy. The applications of DR are conduits in oil pipelines, oil well operations and flood water disposal, many techniques for drag reduction are used. One of these techniques is microbubbles. In this work, reduce of drag percent occurs by using a small bubbles of air pumped in the fluid transported. Gasoil is used as liquid transporting in the pipelines and air pumped as microbubbles. This study shows that the maximum value of drag reduction is 25.11%.
The purpose of this study is to avoid delays and cost changes that occur in emergency reconstruction projects especially in post disaster circumstances. This study is aimed to identify the factors that affect the real construction period and the real cost of a project against the estimated period of construction and the estimated cost of the project. The case study is related to the construction projects in Iraq. Thirty projects in different areas of construction in Iraq were selected as a sample for this study. Project participants from the projects authorities provided data about the projects through a data collection distributed survey made by the authors. Mathematical data analysis was used to construct a model to predict change
... Show MoreThe process of risk assessment in the build-operate transfer (BOT) project is very important to identify and analyze the risks in order to make the appropriate decision to respond to them. In this paper, AHP Technique was used to make the appropriate decision regarding response to the most prominent risks that were generated in BOT projects, which includes a comparison between the criteria for each risk as well as the available alternatives and by mathematical methods using matrices to reach an appropriate decision to respond to each risk.Ten common risks in BOT contracts are adopted for analysis in this paper, which is grouped into six main risk headings.The procedures followed in this paper are the questionnaire method
... Show MoreThe flow measurements have increased importance in the last decades due to the shortage of water resources resulting from climate changes that request high control of the available water needed for different uses. The classical technique of open channel flow measurement by the integrating-float method was needed for measuring flow in different locations when there were no available modern devices for different reasons, such as the cost of devices. So, the use of classical techniques was taken place to solve the problem. The present study examines the integrating float method and defines the parameters affecting the acceleration of floating spheres in flowing water that was analyzed using experimental measurements. The me
... Show MoreKnowledge of permeability, which is the ability of rocks to transmit the fluid, is important for understanding the flow mechanisms in oil and gas reservoirs.
Permeability is best measured in the laboratory on cored rock taken from the reservoir. Coring is expensive and time-consuming in comparison to the electronic survey techniques most commonly used to gain information about permeability.
Yamama formation was chosen, to predict the permeability by using FZI method. Yamama Formation is the main lower cretaceous carbonate reservoir in southern of Iraq. This formation is made up mainly of limestone. Yamama formation was deposited on a gradually rising basin floor. The digenesis of Yamama sediments is very important due to its direct
The research aims to identify the magnitude of the impact of external debt on the gross domestic product in Morocco, and the importance of research lies in the role that external debt plays in addressing structural imbalances, if it is best disposed of according to well-studied economic plans by specialists in this regard, especially if these debts are directed with Other resources, as it helps pay the costs of these debts (debt servicing) that the external debt also raises the level of gross domestic product, and the research starts from the hypothesis that: There is an effect of foreign debt on the GDP in Morocco, has contributed in one way or another to The exacerbation of the external debt, which affected the m
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