This study was conducted to explore the effects of using ionized water on the productive and physiological performance of Japanese quails (Coturnix japonica). Our study was conducted at a private farm from 20th April, 2016 to 13th July, 2016 (84 d). One hundred 42-day-old Japanese quail chicks were used, divided randomly into 5 groups with 4 replicates. Treatments consisted in a control group (T1 - normal water:), alkaline (T2 - pH 8 and T3 - pH 9), and acidic water (T4 - pH 6 and T5 - pH 5). All birds were fed a balanced diet of energy and protein. The egg production ratio, egg weight, cumulative number of eggs, egg mass, feed conversion ratio, productivity per hen per week, and effects on plasma lipids, uric acid, glucose, calcium, and ph

Rapid worldwide urbanization and drastic population growth have increased the demand for new road construction, which will cause a substantial amount of natural resources such as aggregates to be consumed. The use of recycled concrete aggregate could be one of the possible ways to offset the aggregate shortage problem and reduce environmental pollution. This paper reports an experimental study of unbound granular material using recycled concrete aggregate for pavement subbase construction. Five percentages of recycled concrete aggregate obtained from two different sources with an originally designed compressive strength of 20–30 MPa as well as 31–40 MPa at three particle size levels, i.e., coarse, fine, and extra fine, were test

This paper proposes a new encryption method. It combines two cipher algorithms, i.e., DES and AES, to generate hybrid keys. This combination strengthens the proposed W-method by generating high randomized keys. Two points can represent the reliability of any encryption technique. Firstly, is the key generation; therefore, our approach merges 64 bits of DES with 64 bits of AES to produce 128 bits as a root key for all remaining keys that are 15. This complexity increases the level of the ciphering process. Moreover, it shifts the operation one bit only to the right. Secondly is the nature of the encryption process. It includes two keys and mixes one round of DES with one round of AES to reduce the performance time. The W-method deals with

The increase in the number of trucks and other heavy vehicles in Iraqi highways lead to cracking and deteriorations in the flexible highway. The use of polymermodified asphalt may solve this problem to match the required performance standards. This study investigates the effects of styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) polymer on the performance behaviour of Iraqi bitumen binder. The characteristics of bitumen binder were analysed to observe the compatibility of bitumen with SBS polymer. The bitumen binder was mixed with three different contents of SBS (4%, 4.5%, and 5%) by weight of asphalt cement. Viscosity tests were conducted on the SBS polymer-modified asphalt at 135 oC and 165 oC in addition to conventional binder tests. The prepar

The university course timetable problem (UCTP) is typically a combinatorial optimization problem. Manually achieving a useful timetable requires many days of effort, and the results are still unsatisfactory. unsatisfactory. Various states of art methods (heuristic, meta-heuristic) are used to satisfactorily solve UCTP. However, these approaches typically represent the instance-specific solutions. The hyper-heuristic framework adequately addresses this complex problem. This research proposed Particle Swarm Optimizer-based Hyper Heuristic (HH PSO) to solve UCTP efficiently. PSO is used as a higher-level method that selects low-level heuristics (LLH) sequence which further generates an optimal solution. The proposed a

       The interest in green energy in recent years is very noticeable, as this energy is a very important alternative that can replace fuel in many applications, most notably electric power generation, so work must be done to develop a form of this energy such as wind energy by working on the development of turbines. The DMST method provided by Qblade software is an integrated tool for making a simulation of a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). The simulation was carried out on vertical axis wind turbines, designing turbine blades according to symmetrical NACA0018, and calculating some parameters such as power, torque and power coefficient. It is found that this type of turbine can be improved by treating the blade edges that cont

The aim of this work was to estimate the concentrations of natural and artificial nuclides in some fertilized and unfertilized plant samples. These samples were collected and prepared in a petri dish for the measurements using gamma spectroscopy. The average values of 238U, 232Th, 40K, and 137Cs for the unfertilized plant samples were (11.964 ± 3.226, 8.273 ± 2.639, 402.436 ± 18.099, and 2.761 ± 1.613) respectively, and for the fertilized plant samples were (30.434 ± 5.282, 22.584 ± 4.620, 711.332 ± 25.806, and 6.986 ± 2.542) respectively. The average values of radiological hazard indices, Raeq, D, D for 137Cs, (AEDE)in, (AEDE)out, Iγ, Hin, and Hout for the unfertilized plant samples were (54.782 ± 7.216, 27.306, 0.469, 0.

This research depends on the relationship between the reflected spectrum, the nature of each target, area and the percentage of its presence with other targets in the unity of the target area. The changes occur in Land cover have been detected for different years using satellite images based on the Modified Spectral Angle Mapper (MSAM) processing, where Landsat satellite images are utilized using two software programming (MATLAB 7.11 and ERDAS imagine 2014). The proposed supervised classification method (MSAM) using a MATLAB program with supervised classification method (Maximum likelihood Classifier) by ERDAS imagine have been used to get farthest precise results and detect environmental changes for periods. Despite using two classificatio