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

The distress of moisture induced damage in flexible pavement received tremendous attention over the past decades. The harmful effects of this distress expand the deterioration of other known distresses such as rutting and fatigue cracking. This paper focused on the efficiency of using the waste material of demolished concrete to prepare asphalt mixtures that can withstand the effect of moisture in the pavement. For this purpose, different percentages of waste demolished concrete (0, 10, 20, 30, 50, 70 and 100) were embedded as a replacement for coarse aggregate to construct the base course. The optimum asphalt contents were determined depending on the Marshall method. Then after, two parameters were founded to evaluate the moisture

This study aimed at comparing the performance of vertical, horizontal and hybrid subsurface flow systems in secondary treatment for the effluent wastewater from the primary basins at Al-Rustumia wastewater treatment plant, Baghdad, Iraq. The treatments were monitored for six weeks while the testsduration were from 4 to 12 September 2018 under continuous wastewater feeding for chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solid (TSS),ammonia-nitrogen(NH₄-N) and phosphate (PO₄-P) in comparison with FAO and USEPA standards for effluent discharge to evaluate the suitability of treated water for irrigation purposes. Among the systems planted with Phragmites Australia, the hybrid subsurface flow system which cons

This work aimed to study the effect of laser surface treatment on the mechanical characteristics and corrosion behaviour of grey cast iron type A159. Many technical applications used conventional surface treatment, but laser surface hardening has recently been used to enhance the surface properties of many alloys. The mechanical characteristics, including microstructure, microhardness, and wear resistance of A159 grey cast iron, were studied, in addition to corrosion behaviour. The experimental laser parameters in this work were 0.9, 1.2, and 1.5 KW power with continuous wave carbon dioxide lasers with scanning speeds of 10 and 12 mm/s were used. The results found that phase-transitional alterations in microstructure were influenced by lase

One of the important units in Sharq Dijla Water Treatment Plant (WTP) first and second extensions are the alum solution preparation and dosing unit. The existing operation of this unit accomplished manually starting from unloading the powder alum in the preparation basin and ending by controlling the alum dosage addition through the dosing pumps to the flash mix chambers. Because of the modern trend of monitoring and control the automatic operation of WTPs due to the great benefits that could be gain from optimum equipment operation, reducing the operating costs and human errors. This study deals with how to transform the conventional operation to an automatic monitoring and controlling system depending on a Programmable

The research aims to review the concepts of banking efficiency and its relationship to performance, productivity and efficiency, as well as analyze the efficiency of the banking in micro-economic view.
In order to achieve the objectives of the research We have been employed graphic, Econometrics  and Mathematical methods to derive the different concepts of banking efficiency.

We showed that there are two main methods used to measure the bank efficiency, the first called Stochastic Frontier Analysis , this technique depends on the parametric methods, The other method is called Data Envelopment Analysis is based on mathematical programming methods

Urban morphological approach (concepts and practices) plays a significant role in forming our cities not only in terms of theoretical perspective but also in how to practice and experience the urban form structures over time. Urban morphology has been focused on studying the processes of formation and transformation of urban form based on its historical development. The main purpose of this study is to explore and describe the existing literature of this approach and thus aiming to summarize the most important studies that put into understanding the city form. In this regard, there were three schools of urban morphological studies, namely: the British, the Italian, and the French School. A reflective comparison between t

Background: This review aims to discuss various canine retraction techniques using frictionless mechanics. Methods: Between 1930 and February 2022, searches were conducted about various canine retraction techniques using fixed orthodontic appliances in various databases, including PubMed Central, Science Direct, Wiley Online Library, the Cochrane Library, Textbooks, Google Scholar, Research Gate, and manual searching. Results: After removing the duplicate articles, publications that described how to use archwires to perform canine retraction with the archwires were included. Conclusions: The pros and cons of various canine retraction techniques using archwires were thoroughly discussed. T-loop is the preferred spring of all because of it

The Dagum Regression Model, introduced to address limitations in traditional econometric models, provides enhanced flexibility for analyzing data characterized by heavy tails and asymmetry, which is common in income and wealth distributions. This paper develops and applies the Dagum model, demonstrating its advantages over other distributions such as the Log-Normal and Gamma distributions. The model's parameters are estimated using Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) and the Method of Moments (MoM). A simulation study evaluates both methods' performance across various sample sizes, showing that MoM tends to offer more robust and precise estimates, particularly in small samples. These findings provide valuable insights into the ana