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Numbness of the Mind Paradigm in Haruki Murakami’s After the Quake and Iraq’s After the Quake
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Haruki Murakami (1949-present) is a contemporary Japanese writer whose works have been translated into fifty languages and won him plenty of Japanese and international awards. His short stories are well constructed in a weird realistic manner and are mixed with elements of surrealism. His novels and short stories fall under the genre of magical realism. One of the major revolving themes that Murakami wrote about was the haunting feeling of emptiness and disconnectedness in a world which seems to care much for materialism and self-interests.

    The paper explores two of Murakami’s short stories in his book After the Quake (2000) and the relevance of their themes and characters to Iraq after the quake. Literally, Iraq may never have witnessed a real earthquake, but one can say its metaphorical meaning has a great implication upon the lives of its people. The reference to Iraq after the quake in this paper would focus on the aftermath of the 2003 War such as: the feeling of disconnection among people, disinclination in life, feelings of deprivation and depreciation, and the corruption of leaders and politicians. Likewise, though Murakami’s short stories chosen in this paper do not deal with the actual earthquake, its implications can be felt as we read the stories. His characters witness a sense of disconnectedness and the feeling of being unappreciated even when they do the hardest and most dangerous jobs.

    Two of Murakami’s short stories “UFO in Kushiro” and “Super Frog Saves Tokyo” are tackled to show the paradigm and comparison between the lives of these characters (that are actually a reflection of Japanese lives in mid 1990s) and the restricted depressing life of the Iraqis in the postwar era of the 2003 War. Both have experienced fragmentation, despair and lack of self-worth due to the reasons that are explained in this paper. The Iraqis however, may have experienced a deeper suffering where one can say they have reached a state of the numbness or enslavement of the mind and feelings. The paper also highlights that animosity should be dissipated from the hearts of people specifically in politicians and top leaders. Though it is a complicated world, man should conceive that the prosperity of mankind rests in his own hands. Cherishing the diversity of cultures and understanding each other’s moral principles are the means to diminish evil in order to reach the desired bliss.

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Publication Date
Thu Mar 01 2007
Journal Name
Al-khwarizmi Engineering Journal
The Inverse Solution Of Dexterous Robot By Using Neural Networks
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The inverse kinematics of redundant manipulators has infinite solutions by using conventional methods, so that, this work presents applicability of intelligent tool (artificial neural network ANN) for finding one desired solution from these solutions. The inverse analysis and trajectory planning of a three link redundant planar robot have been studied in this work using a proposed dual neural networks model (DNNM), which shows a predictable time decreasing in the training session. The effect of the number of the training sets on the DNNM output and the number of NN layers have been studied. Several trajectories have been implemented using point to point trajectory planning algorithm with DNNM and the result shows good accuracy of the end

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Publication Date
Mon Jun 05 2023
Journal Name
Journal Of Engineering
Rehabilitating Iraqi Schools According to the Requirements of Social Sustainability
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Recently, Social Sustainability has gained significant value as it was considered by the late studies as a principal dimension along with the environmental and economic sustainability. And because of, on the other hand, the significant social role of the school for forming the student’s personality, this research is an appeal for rehabilitating and promoting Iraqi Schools according the issue of social sustainability.As there is no evaluation for the Iraqi Schools, the research is dedicated to this problem, aiming to carry out the stated evaluation and define the design treatments needed for the rehabilitation process. To achieve this goal, a theoretical background for the concept of social sustainability, its criteria, the school and i

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Publication Date
Tue Nov 01 2022
Journal Name
Journal Of Engineering
Flow Over the Spillway of AlAdhiam Dam Under Gated Condition
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The AlAdhaim Dam is located 133 kilometers northeast of Baghdad. It is a multipurpose dam and joints the Iraqi dam system in 2000. It has a storage capacity of 1.5 billion m3. The dam has an ogee spillway with a length of 562 m, a crest level of 131.5 m.a.m.s.l. and a maximum discharge capacity of 1150 m3/s at its maximum storage height of 143 m.a.m.s.l. This research aimed to investigate the hydrodynamics performance of the spillway and the stilling basin of AlAdhiam Dam by using numerical simulation models under gated situations. It was suggested to modify the dam capacity by increasing the dam's storage capacity by installing gates on the crest of the dam spillway. The FLUENT program was used to

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Publication Date
Sat Oct 01 2011
Journal Name
Journal Of Engineering
THE EFFECT OF CUTOFF WALL ANGLE ON SEEPAGE UNDER DAMS
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Flow of water under concrete dams generates uplift pressure under the dam, which may cause the dam to function improperly, in addition to the exit gradient that may cause piping if exceeded a safe value. Cutoff walls usually used to minimize the effect of flow under dams. It is required to
1)minimize the flow quantity to conserve water in the reservoir, it is also required to
2)minimize the uplift pressure under the dam to maintain stability of the dam, and it is required to

3) minimize the exit gradient to prevent quick condition to occur at the toe of the dam where piping may occur and may cause erosion of the soil. Varying the angle of cutoff walls affects its influence on the factors aforementioned that are required to

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Publication Date
Tue Dec 01 2020
Journal Name
Journal Of Engineering
Impact of Induction Motor Faults on the Basic Parameters' Values
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Unlike fault diagnosis approaches based on the direct analysis of current and voltage signals, this paper proposes a diagnosis of induction motor faults through monitoring the variations in motor's parameters when it is subjected to an open circuit or short circuit faults. These parameters include stator and rotor resistances, self-inductances, and mutual inductance. The genetic algorithm and the trust-region method are used for the estimation process. Simulation results confirm the efficiency of both the genetic algorithm and the trust-region method in estimating the motor parameters; however, better performance in terms of estimation time is obtained when the trust-region method is adopted. The results also show the po

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Publication Date
Tue May 23 2023
Journal Name
Journal Of Engineering
Numerical Simulation of Ice Melting Using the Finite Volume Method
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The Aim of this paper is to investigate numerically the simulation of ice melting in one and two dimension using the cell-centered finite volume method. The mathematical model is based on the heat conduction equation associated with a fixed grid, latent heat source approach. The fully implicit time scheme is selected to represent the time discretization. The ice conductivity is chosen
to be the value of the approximated conductivity at the interface between adjacent ice and water control volumes. The predicted temperature distribution, percentage melt fraction, interface location and its velocity is compared with those obtained from the exact analytical solution. A good agreement is obtained when comparing the numerical results of one

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Publication Date
Sat Jul 22 2023
Journal Name
Journal Of Engineering
Surface Free Energy for the Evaluation of Asphalt Binder Stripping
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Stripping is one of the major distresses within asphalt concrete pavements caused due to penetration of water within the interface of asphalt-aggregate matrix. In this work, one grade of asphalt cement (40-50) was mixed with variable percentages of three types of additives (fly ash, fumed silica, and phosphogypsum) to obtained an modified asphalt cement to resist the effect of stripping phenomena .The specimens have been tested for physical properties according to AASHTO. The surface free energy has been measured by using two methods namely, the wilhelmy technique and the Sessile drop method according to NCHRP-104
procedures. Samples of asphalt concrete using different asphalt cement and modified asphalt cement percentages(4.1,4.6 an

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Publication Date
Wed Aug 07 2019
Journal Name
Iraqi National Journal Of Nursing Specialties
Assessment of the health behaviors patterns among women during pregnancy
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Objective:- Women's behavior during pregnancy which can affect the health of their infant , may be influenced by their attitude toward the pregnancy. The study was carried out to assess the pattern of health behaviors for pregnant women. Methodology: A descriptive study was carried out to select randomized (100) pregnant women attending Baghdad Teaching hospital. The data were collected through personal interview by using questionnaire form constructed for the purpose of the study. Results:- The result of the study revealed that the highest percentage of study sample were in age group (21-25) years, primary graduated and house wife . The results showed that the highest percentage( 64%) of them were primigravida, (72%) of them have (1-2)

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Publication Date
Wed Jul 01 2015
Journal Name
Journal Of Engineering
Enhancing the Performance of Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters Using Permanent Magnets
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A cantilevered piezoelectric beam with a tip mass at its free end is a common energy harvester configuration. This paper introduces a new principle of designing such a harvester which increases the generated voltage without changing the natural frequency of the harvester: The attraction force between two permanent magnets is used to add stiffness to the system. This magnetic stiffening counters the effect of the tip mass on the natural frequency. Three setups incorporating piezoelectric bimorph cantilevers of the same type in different mechanical configurations are compared theoretically and experimentally to investigate the feasibility of this principle. Theoretical and experimental results show that magnetically stiffe

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Publication Date
Thu Mar 12 2020
Journal Name
Al-khwarizmi Engineering Journal
The Influence of ProcessVariables for MillingSculptured Surfaces on Surface Roughness
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Increasing the variety of products that are being designed with sculptured surfaces, efficient machining of these surfaces has become more important in many manufacturing industries. The objective of the present work is the investigation of milling parameters for the sculptured surfacesthat effecting of surface roughness during machining of Al-alloy. The machining operation implemented on C-TEK CNC milling machine. The influence of the selected variables on the chosen characteristics have been accomplished using Taguchi design approach, also ANOVA had been utilized to evaluate the contributionsof each parameter on proc

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