Both the double-differenced and zero-differenced GNSS positioning strategies have been widely used by the geodesists for different geodetic applications which are demanded for reliable and precise positions. A closer inspection of the requirements of these two GNSS positioning techniques, the zero-differenced positioning, which is known as Precise Point Positioning (PPP), has gained a special importance due to three main reasons. Firstly, the effective applications of PPP for geodetic purposes and precise applications depend entirely on the availability of the precise satellite products which consist of precise satellite orbital elements, precise satellite clock corrections, and Earth orientation parameters. Secondly, th

This paper proposes a novel finite-time generalized proportional integral observer (FTGPIO) based a sliding mode control (SMC) scheme for the tracking control problem of high order uncertain systems subject to fast time-varying disturbances. For this purpose, the construction of the controller consists of two consecutive steps. First, the novel FTGPIO is designed to observe unmeasurable plant dynamics states and disturbance with its higher time derivatives in finite time rather than infinite time as in the standard GPIO. In the FTGPO estimator, the finite time convergence rate of estimations is well achieved, whereas the convergence rate of estimations by classical GPIO is asymptotic and slow. Secondly, on the basis of the finite and fast e

Objective: The present study aims to assess the stressful life events for patients with substance abuse in Baghdad city.
Methodology: A descriptive study was carried out at (Baghdad teaching hospital and Ibn-Rushed Psychiatric hospital).
Starting from 1
st of December 2012 to 3
rd of July 2013, A non-probability (purposive) sample of 64 patients that
diagnosed with substance abuse, the data were collected through the use of semi-structured interview by
questionnaire, which consists of three parts sociodemographic data, medical information, and Life events scale
consists of 49-items distributed to six domains including, family and social domain, health domain, security, legal and
criminal domain, work and school do

This article presents a new cascaded extended state observer (CESO)-based sliding-mode control (SMC) for an underactuated flexible joint robot (FJR). The control of the FJR has many challenges, including coupling, underactuation, nonlinearity, uncertainties and external disturbances, and the noise amplification especially in the high-order systems. The proposed control integrates the CESO and SMC, in which the CESO estimates the states and disturbances, and the SMC provides the system robustness to the uncertainty and disturbance estimation errors. First, a dynamic model of the FJR is derived and converted from an underactuated form to a canonical form via the Olfati transformation and a flatness approach, which reduces the complexity of th

In general, path-planning problem is one of most important task in the field of robotics. This paper describes the path-planning problem of mobile robot based on various metaheuristic algorithms. The suitable collision free path of a robot must satisfies certain optimization criteria such as feasibility, minimum path length, safety and smoothness and so on. In this research, various three approaches namely, PSO, Firefly and proposed hybrid FFCPSO are applied in static, known environment to solve the global path-planning problem in three cases. The first case used single mobile robot, the second case used three independent mobile robots and the third case applied three follow up mobile robot.  Simulation results, whi

In this paper, the construction of Hermite wavelets functions and their operational matrix of integration is presented. The Hermite wavelets method is applied to solve nth order Volterra integro diferential equations (VIDE) by expanding the unknown functions, as series in terms of Hermite wavelets with unknown coefficients. Finally, two examples are given

Due to its importance in physics and applied mathematics, the non-linear Sturm-Liouville problems
witnessed massive attention since 1960. A powerful Mathematical technique called the Newton-Kantorovich
method is applied in this work to one of the non-linear Sturm-Liouville problems. To the best of the authors’
knowledge, this technique of Newton-Kantorovich has never been applied before to solve the non-linear
Sturm-Liouville problems under consideration. Accordingly, the purpose of this work is to show that this
important specific kind of non-linear Sturm-Liouville differential equations problems can be solved by
applying the well-known Newton-Kantorovich method. Also, to show the efficiency of appl

Aerial Robot Arms (ARAs) enable aerial drones to interact and influence objects in various environments. Traditional ARA controllers need the availability of a high-precision model to avoid high control chattering. Furthermore, in practical applications of aerial object manipulation, the payloads that ARAs can handle vary, depending on the nature of the task. The high uncertainties due to modeling errors and an unknown payload are inversely proportional to the stability of ARAs. To address the issue of stability, a new adaptive robust controller, based on the Radial Basis Function (RBF) neural network, is proposed. A three-tier approach is also followed. Firstly, a detailed new model for the ARA is derived using the Lagrange–d’A

The paper investigates the impact of role-playing as a classroom technique on Iraqi EFL students’ speaking skill on Iraqi EFL students at the college level. The students are 40 college language students in University of Baghdad, College of Education Ibn-Rushd randomly chosen. Then, they were divided into two groups, experimental and control groups. Thirty questions were applied to both groups as a pre-test of speaking and the students asked to answer them orally. The experimental group was taught speaking skill of the targeted role-play technique while the control group was taught in traditional method. After 20 lessons of the teaching, the post-test of speaking was conducted in which the students in both groups were asked to answ