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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
Wed Mar 10 2021
Journal Name
Baghdad Science Journal
Overlap food for fish in the Haditha Dam Reservoir (Qadisiyah) Iraq
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Shehadt 683 fish of different fish present in the tank Haditha Dam during the period of February 1993 and the end Maes 1994 to identify the nutritional content of the digestive tract or the stomach for these fish and their impact on the environment of the tank and found that Fish fine linen and Alhalg animal feeding predators feed on small fish, mainly the fish brown plantnutrition

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Publication Date
Tue Feb 05 2019
Journal Name
Journal Of The College Of Education For Women
Attitudes The King Ghazi Direction British Policy In Iraq 1933-1939
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The period of the reign of King Ghazi saw many disorders in most parts of the country and the management disrupted and imbalanced, besides tribal unrests and political conflict and collision with British interests, Such as bad management in some regions and loss of government control over some administrative units, due to the position of the weak governments towards these problems, so it was necessary to change these Governments and Ministers to solve such problems. In contrast, the Iraqi government has focused on the army as the basis for a strong state and the protector on the existence of an external threat for the safety of the country, King Ghazi has helped in the development of competencies of the military, bringing the officers ex

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Publication Date
Sun Jul 09 2023
Journal Name
Journal Of Engineering
The Effective Width in Composite Steel Concrete Beams at Ultimate Loads
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A composite section is made up of a concrete slab attached to a steel beam by means of shear connectors. Under positive and negative bending moment, part of the slab will act as a flange of the beam, resisting the longitudinal compression or tension force. When the spacing between girders becomes large, it is evident that the simple beam theory does not strictly apply because the longitudinal stress in the flange will vary with distance from the girder web, the flange being more highly stressed over the web than in the extremities. This phenomenon is termed "shear lag". In this paper, a nonlinear three-dimensional finite element analysis is employed to evaluate and determine the actual effective slab width of the composite steel-concrete

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Publication Date
Tue Sep 30 2014
Journal Name
Iraqi Journal Of Chemical And Petroleum Engineering
Analytical Model for Detection the Tilt in Originally Oil Water Contacts
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Many carbonate reservoirs in the world show a tilted in originally oil-water contact (OOWC) which requires a special consideration in the selection of the capillary pressure curves and an understanding of reservoir fluids distribution while initializing the reservoir simulation models.
An analytical model for predicting the capillary pressure across the interface that separates two immiscible fluids was derived from reservoir pressure transient analysis. The model reflected the entire interaction between the reservoir-aquifer fluids and rock properties measured under downhole reservoir conditions.
This model retained the natural coupling of oil reservoirs with the aquifer zone and treated them as an explicit-region composite system

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Publication Date
Mon Jan 01 2024
Journal Name
Journal Of Engineering
Significant Safety Factors Affecting the Safety Performance in Iraqi Construction Projects
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Despite recent attempts to improve safety in the construction sector, this sector is considered dangerous and unsafe. Iraq is one of the emerging nations that suffers from a lack of construction safety management. In 2018, the construction sector in Iraq was responsible for 38% of all industrial accidents. Creating a safety program minimizes this problem by making safety an intrinsic part of construction projects. As a result, this article aims to identify the crucial safety factors that affect the safety performance in Iraqi construction projects. After conducting a critical literature review of the related literature, a list of 35 sub-factors classified into nine categories of main factors was chosen to rank each facto

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Publication Date
Wed May 14 2025
Journal Name
Reproductive Biology And Endocrinology
The aryl hydrocarbon receptor: a new frontier in male reproductive system
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Background: The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) is a ligand-activated transcription factor historically recognized for its role in the regulation of toxicity mediated by environmental chemicals. Recent research points to AhR's critical participation in male reproductive physiology, particularly in spermatogenesis, hormone signaling, and the maintenance of sperm quality. Both endogenous ligands (e.g., dietary and gut microbiota-derived metabolites) and exogenous pollutants (e.g., dioxins and benzo-α-pyrene) influence AhR-mediated pathways, making it a key link between environmental exposures and male fertility. Results: This review highlights AhR's influence on the male reproductive system, emphasizing the role of endogenous AhR ligands an

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Publication Date
Sun Sep 30 2018
Journal Name
Iraqi Journal Of Chemical And Petroleum Engineering
Biological Co-existence of the Microalgae – Bacteria System in Dairy Wastewater using photo-bioreactor
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Aeration system in the cultivation of Chlorella Sp. Microalgae using dairy wastewater as culture media was addressed in the current study. This research aimed to study the effect of aeration in the bubble column bioreactor on the biological synergy between microalgae and bacteria if they are present in the same place. The results show that the sterilization stage is not the dominant step in the success of microalgae cultivation in water-rich organic waste. There is a clear convergence between the growth rate of Chlorella microalgae in the sterilized and non-sterilized culture media, which gives realism if the proposal is applied industrially. Through the information obtained the aerobic bacteria in the non-sterilized me

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Publication Date
Wed Dec 31 2025
Journal Name
Journal Of Baghdad College Of Dentistry
The effect of tooth shape ratio on mandibular incisors arrangement in Iraqi adult subjects
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Background: This study aimed to assess the effect of tooth shape ratio on mandibular incisor arrangement. Materials and methods: The sample included dental casts of some dental students and orthodontic patients having Class I dental and skeletal patterns with normal occlusion and severe crowding. The sample was divided into two groups according to the severity of crowding into: group I had Class I normal occlusion with mild or no crowded mandibular dentition and group II had Class I malocclusion with severe crowded mandibular dentition. Each group comprising of 40 subjects (20 males and 20 females). The mesio-distal and facio-lingual crown diameters were measured manually for each cast using modified vernier caliper gauge. Descriptive sta

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Publication Date
Tue Jul 01 2025
Journal Name
Iet Conference Proceedings
Spatial quantile autoregressive model with application to poverty rates in the districts of Iraq
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This research aims to provide insight into the Spatial Autoregressive Quantile Regression model (SARQR), which is more general than the Spatial Autoregressive model (SAR) and Quantile Regression model (QR) by integrating aspects of both. Since Bayesian approaches may produce reliable estimates of parameter and overcome the problems that standard estimating techniques, hence, in this model (SARQR), they were used to estimate the parameters. Bayesian inference was carried out using Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques. Several criteria were used in comparison, such as root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and coefficient of determination (R^2). The application was devoted on dataset of poverty rates acro

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Publication Date
Wed Mar 10 2021
Journal Name
Baghdad Science Journal
Study a bout the Epidemiology of Vulvo Vaginal Candidiasis (Candida spp.) in Baghdad City
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This Study was conducted to investigate vaginitis in women who live in Baghdad City. Results Revealed that Candida spp. were the causal agent of 38.5% of symptomatic cases the yeasts Candidaalbicans, C.glabrata, C.tropicalis, C.parapsilosis and C.krusei were isolated with the percentage of 38.1, 9.1, 3.9, 2.6, 1.3 respectively also there were 18% of women in control group carrying Candida spp. The direct smear method were not efficient because the percentage of infection was 17.5% comparing with the culture method the sensitivity of direct smear method was 45.5% The percentage of WBC to Epithelial cells was less than one in 76.6% of women.

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