Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is. Reading comprehension is much more than decoding; it results when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type oftext, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose.Reading comprehension is important because without it reading is nothing more than tracking symbols on a page with your eyes and sounding them out leaving the reader with no information. Instead of promoting traditional approaches, reading should be taught in a more interactive and communicative manner. In this light, this study investigates the difficulties faced by engineering students in reading comprehension in a university setting where the medium of instruction and communication is not English, but where students are required to read textbooks in English. The participants are selected from College of Engineering/ University of Al-Mustansiriya to take the test. However, a standardized test is used to show the students‟ difficulties in reading comprehension. Two passages are used in the test, the first one is concerned with their specialization in engineering while the second is concerned with general topics. Data analysis is conducted through using one sample T. test and percentages statistical methods. Results of this study reveal that engineering students have great difficulties in reading comprehension since most of them have not succeeded in the test. Reasons behind such results have been illustrated and certain suggestions have been given to be useful for both teachers and students of scientific fields especially engineering.
Purpose Heavy metals are toxic pollutants released into the environment as a result of different industrial activities. Biosorption of heavy metals from aqueous solutions is a new technology for the treatment of industrial wastewater. The aim of the present research is to highlight the basic biosorption theory to heavy metal removal. Materials and methods Heterogeneous cultures mostly dried anaerobic bacteria, yeast (fungi), and protozoa were used as low-cost material to remove metallic cations Pb(II), Cr(III), and Cd(II) from synthetic wastewater. Competitive biosorption of these metals was studied. Results The main biosorption mechanisms were complexation and physical adsorption onto natural active functional groups. It is observed that
... Show MoreWe studied the changing of structural and optical properties of pure and Aluminum-doped ZnO thin films prepared by thermal evaporation technique on glass substrates at thickness (800±50)nm with changing of annealing temperatures ( 200,250,300 )℃ for one hour. The investigation of (XRD) indicates that the pure and doped ZnO thin films were polycrystalline of a hexagonal wurtzite structure with preferred orientation along (002) plane. The grain size was decreased with doping before annealing, but after annealing the grain size is increasing with the increase of annealing temperature for pure film whereas for the doped films with ratios 1 %, 2 % we found that the grain size is larger than that before annealing. The grain size
... Show MoreCadmium oxide CdO thin films were prepared by successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) technique at varying number of dippings. The CdO thin films were prepared from a source material of Cadmium acetate and ammonium hydroxide solution deposited on glass substrate at 95℃. The prepared thin films were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Atomic force microscopy (AFM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR), and UV-Visible spectrometry. The XRD analysis reveals that the films were polycrystalline with cubic structure having preferential orientation along (1 1 1), (2 0 0), (2 2 0), and (3 1 1) planes. While the tests of the scanning electron microscopy and the atomic force mic
... Show MoreIn this study, biodiesel was prepared from chicken fat via a transesterification reaction using Mussel shells as a catalyst. Pretreatment of chicken fat was carried out using non‐catalytic esterification to reduce the free fatty acid content from 36.28 to 0.96 mg KOH/g oil using an ethanol/ fat mole ratio equal to 115:1. In the transesterification reaction, the studied variables were methanol: oil mole ratio in the range of (6:1 ‐ 30:1), catalyst loading in the range of (9‐15) wt%, reaction temperature (55‐75 °C), and reaction time (1‐7) h. The heterogeneous alkaline catalyst was greenly synthesized from waste mussel shells throughout a calcin
In this study, biodiesel was prepared from chicken fat via a transesterification reaction using Mussel shells as a catalyst. Pretreatment of chicken fat was carried out using non‐catalytic esterification to reduce the free fatty acid content from 36.28 to 0.96 mg KOH/g oil using an ethanol/ fat mole ratio equal to 115:1. In the transesterification reaction, the studied variables were methanol: oil mole ratio in the range of (6:1 ‐ 30:1), catalyst loading in the range of (9‐15) wt%, reaction temperature (55‐75 °C), and reaction time (1‐7) h. The heterogeneous alkaline catalyst was greenly synthesized from waste mussel shells throughout a calcin
This research deals with the effect of gallium oxide and cerium oxide as dopants on the structural and optical characteristics of tin oxide. Gallium and cerium oxide doped tin oxide was prepared with different doping concentrations (0, 0.03, 0.05 and 0.07) wt. pure and doped tin oxide thin films were prepared by the pulsed laser deposition technique. X-ray diffraction and UV-Visible spectrophotometer were employed to investigate both oxides doping effects. Results showed that all prepared samples have poly-crystalline structure with a preferred plane of crystal growth along (110), where the crystal size grew from 40.3 nm to 64.5 nm and to 43.5 nm for Ga2O3 and CeO2 doped tin oxide thin films, res
... Show MoreTemperature predicting is the utilization to forecast the condition of the temperature for an upcoming date for a given area. Temperature predictions are done by gathering quantitative data in regard to the current state of the atmosphere. In this study, a proposed hybrid method to predication the daily maximum and minimum air temperature of Baghdad city which combines standard backpropagation with simulated annealing (SA). Simulated Annealing Algorithm are used for weights optimization for recurrent multi-layer neural network system. Experimental tests had been implemented using the data of maximum and minimum air temperature for month of July of Baghdad city that got from local records of Iraqi Meteorological O
... Show MoreOrganic soil is problematic soils in geotechnical engineering due to its properties, as it is characterized by high compressibility and low bearing capacity. Therefore, several geotechnical techniques tried to stabilize and improve this soil type. In this study, sodium silicate was used to stabilize sand dune columns. The best sodium silicate concentration (9%) was used, and the stabilized sand dune columns were cured for seven days. The results for this soil were extracted using a numerical analysis program (Plaxis 3D, 2020).In the case of studying the effect of (L/D) (where ‘’L” and ‘’D’’ length and diameter of sand dune columns) of a single column of sand dunes stabilized with sodium silicate with a diff
... Show MoreThe core objective of this study was to investigate the physicochemical characteristics and fatty acid composition of the oils of sunflower, olive, virgin coconut and ginger oils, as well as the separation of their unsaturated fatty acids. The data indicated a significant variation in physicochemical properties (acid, saponification, ester, and iodine values) among oils. Transesterification process was carried out at a molar ratio of 1:7:0.1 of oil: methanol: KOH. Fatty acid methyl esters of oils were analyzed by infrared (IR) and gas chromatography–mass (GC-MS) spectrometry. Twelve fatty acids were identified, where the major fatty acid of olive oil was found to be oleic acid (89%), whereas those of sunflower and ging
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