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

Due to the deliberate disposal of industrial waste, a great amount of petroleum hydrocarbons pollute the soil and aquatic environments. Bioremediation that depends on the microorganisms in the removal of pollutants is more efficient and cost-effective technology. In this study, five rhizobacteria were isolated from Phragmites australis roots and exposed to real wastewater from Al-Daura refinery with 70 mg/L total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) concentration. The five selected rhizobacteria were examined in a biodegradation test for seven days to remove TPH. The results showed that 80% TPH degradation as the maximum value by Sphingomonas Paucimobilis as identified with Vitek® 2 Compact (France).

The present study aims to evaluate the biosorption of reactive orange dye by using garden grass. Experiments were carried out in a batch reactor to obtain equilibrium and thermodynamic data. Experimental parameters affecting the biosorption process such as pH, shaking time, initial dye concentrations, and temperature were thoroughly examined. The optimum pH for removal was found to be 4. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analysis indicated that the electronegative groups on the surface of garden grass were the major groups responsible for the biosorption process. Four sorption isotherm models were employed to analyze the experimental data of which Temkin and Pyzhey model was found to be most suitable one. The maxim

The most universal and basic damages caused by an earthquakes are buildings damage and human casualties. A simplified method, the RADIUS 99 Tool is used to calculate seismic intensity (shaking) distribution, buildings damage, number of casualties and lifelines damage, due to assumed earthquake scenario. In this study, Al - Kadhmiya sector in Baghdad city was chosen for assessing seismic risk, for this purpose, this area was divided into mesh of 1*1 km2 cell size, and a scenario of (Manjil) earthquake (that struck Iran in 1990) was utilized with following earthquake magnitudes (5 and 7), with epicenter distance (3, 10 and 100 km), and depths (2 and 5 km). It was found that, the best soil types for constructions are those with medium and h

Ultrasound has been used as a diagnostic modality for many intraocular diseases, due its safety, low cost, real time and wide availability. Unfortunately, ultrasound images suffer from speckle artifact that are tissue dependent. In this work, we will offer a method to reduce speckle noise and improve ultrasound image to raise the human diagnostic performance. This method combined undecimated wavelet transform with a wavelet coefficient mapping function: where UDWT used to eliminate the noise and a wavelet coefficient mapping function used to enhance the contrast of denoised images obtained from the first component. This methods can be used not only as a means for improving visual quality of medical images but also as a preprocessing

Alumina thin films have significant applications in the areas of optoelectronics, optics, electrical insulators, sensors and tribology. The novel aspect of this work is that the homogeneous alumina thin films were prepared in several stages to generate a plasma jet. In this paper, aluminium nanoparticles suspended in vinyl alcohol were prepared using exploding wire plasma. TEM analysis was used to determine the size and shape of particles in aluminium and vinyl alcohol suspensions; the TEM images showed that the particle size is 17.2 nm. Aluminium/poly vinyl alcohol (Al/PVA) thin films were prepared using this suspension on quartz substrate by plasma jet technique at room temperature with an argon gas flow rate of 1 L/min. The Al/PV

Background: Congenital club foot is a complex deformity of foot .It is a collection of different abnormalities, with different etiologies. Consequently, Severity varies with   difficulties in evaluating treatment strategies with outcome results. The treatment of congenital club foot remains controversial. Usually, the orthopedist's goal is to obtain anatomically and functionally normal feet in all patients.                                Objective: To asses short term follow up result of conservatively treated club feet in relation to the age of initial casting by Ponseti technique.           Methods :A cross sectional observational study with some comparative content done in Al-kindy