In the field of construction project management, time and cost are the most important factors to be considered in planning every project, and their relationship is complex. The total cost for each project is the sum of the direct and indirect cost. Direct cost commonly represents labor, materials, equipment, etc.
Indirect cost generally represents overhead cost such as supervision, administration, consultants, and interests. Direct cost grows at an increasing rate as the project time is reduced from its original planned time. However, indirect cost continues for the life of the project and any reduction in project time means a reduction in indirect cost. Therefore, there is a trade-off between the time and cost for completing construction activities.
In this research, modeling of time-cost optimization, generating global optimum solution for time and cost problem, and lowering construction time and cost using ant colony optimization algorithm
The present paper describes and analyses three proposed cogeneration plants include back pressure steam-turbine system, gas turbine system, diesel-engine system, and the present Dura refinery plant. Selected actual operating data are employed for analysis. The same amount of electrical and thermal product outputs is considered for all systems to facilitate comparisons. The theoretical analysis was done according to 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamic. The results demonstrate that exergy analysis is a useful tool in performance analysis of cogeneration systems and permits meaningful comparisons of different cogeneration systems based on their merits, also the result showed that the back pressure steam-turbine is more efficient than other pro
... Show MoreThis paper is an attempt to foster creative performance of students in essay writing through using tips. Prewriting tips are a series of strategies ( outline in essay writing). These tips enable :::e Iraqi students to be aware of the process of writing as a guideline to what is expected from them as good essay writers. The study aims at: I .Finding out whether college students are aware of using these tips in fostering creativity performance in their essay writing? 2. To what extent can the application of these tips contribute in developing students' essay writing? To achieve these aims. 2 questionnaire and a test have been conducted and distributed on two parallel th
... Show MoreDue to the vast using of digital images and the fast evolution in computer science and especially the using of images in the social network.This lead to focus on securing these images and protect it against attackers, many techniques are proposed to achieve this goal. In this paper we proposed a new chaotic method to enhance AES (Advanced Encryption Standards) by eliminating Mix-Columns transformation to reduce time consuming and using palmprint biometric and Lorenz chaotic system to enhance authentication and security of the image, by using chaotic system that adds more sensitivity to the encryption system and authentication for the system.
Some problems want to be solved in image compression to make the process workable and more efficient. Much work had been done in the field of lossy image compression based on wavelet and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). In this paper, an efficient image compression scheme is proposed, based on a common encoding transform scheme; It consists of the following steps: 1) bi-orthogonal (tab 9/7) wavelet transform to split the image data into sub-bands, 2) DCT to de-correlate the data, 3) the combined transform stage's output is subjected to scalar quantization before being mapped to positive, 4) and LZW encoding to produce the compressed data. The peak signal-to-noise (PSNR), compression ratio (CR), and compression gain (CG) measures were used t
... Show MoreMedical image segmentation is one of the most actively studied fields in the past few decades, as the development of modern imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT), physicians and technicians nowadays have to process the increasing number and size of medical images. Therefore, efficient and accurate computational segmentation algorithms become necessary to extract the desired information from these large data sets. Moreover, sophisticated segmentation algorithms can help the physicians delineate better the anatomical structures presented in the input images, enhance the accuracy of medical diagnosis and facilitate the best treatment planning. Many of the proposed algorithms could perform w
... Show MoreThe aim of this paper is to determine the feasibility of using fluorometric methods as an indicator for quality and contamination of milk with E.coli bacteria, and selection the suitable wavelength to be used with laser induced auto fluorescence. Three groups of milk samples were used in this study: Fresh pasteurized milk samples, milk samples containing different concentration of E.coli bacteria which were added artificially, and milk samples that were kept in refrigerator for 3-5 days. Thirteen excitation wavelengths were used to get the emission spectra for all milk samples using spectroflourometer .The results showed that the emission spectra at 275nm excitation wavelength gave a good differentiation between these three groups.
... Show MoreThe application of ultrafiltration (UF) and nanofiltration (NF) processes in the handling of raw produced water have been investigated in the present study. Experiments of both ultrafiltration and nanofiltration processes are performed in a laboratory unit, which is operated in a cross-flow pattern. Various types of hollow fiber membranes were utilized in this study such as poly vinyl chloride (PVC) UF membrane, two different polyether sulfone (PES) NF membranes, and poly phenyl sulfone PPSU NF membrane. It was found that the turbidity of the treated water is higher than 95 % by using UF and NF membranes. The chemical oxygen demand COD (160 mg/l) and Oil content (26.8 mg/l) were found after treatment according to the allowable limits set
... Show MoreAfter the outbreak of COVID-19, immediately it converted from epidemic to pandemic. Radiologic images of CT and X-ray have been widely used to detect COVID-19 disease through observing infrahilar opacity in the lungs. Deep learning has gained popularity in diagnosing many health diseases including COVID-19 and its rapid spreading necessitates the adoption of deep learning in identifying COVID-19 cases. In this study, a deep learning model, based on some principles has been proposed for automatic detection of COVID-19 from X-ray images. The SimpNet architecture has been adopted in our study and trained with X-ray images. The model was evaluated on both binary (COVID-19 and No-findings) classification and multi-class (COVID-19, No-findings
... Show MoreDrilling fluid loss during drilling operation is undesirable, expensive and potentially hazardous problem.
Nasiriyah oil field is one of the Iraqi oil field that suffer from lost circulation problem. It is known that Dammam, um-Radoma, Tayarat, Shiranish and Hartha are the detecting layers of loss circulation problem. Different type of loss circulation materials (LCMs) ranging from granular, flakes and fibrous were used previously to treat this problem.
This study presents the application of rice as a lost circulation material that used to mitigate and stop the loss problem when partial or total losses occurred.
The experim
... Show MoreIn this paper, we deal with games of fuzzy payoffs problem while there is uncertainty in data. We use the trapezoidal membership function to transform the data into fuzzy numbers and utilize the three different ranking function algorithms. Then we compare between these three ranking algorithms by using trapezoidal fuzzy numbers for the decision maker to get the best gains