Ecosystems provide humans with services that include benefits from food, fresh water, climate regulation, and socio-economic assets. The Mesopotamian marshlands are among the largest wetlands in the Middle East and they provide various benefits. However, ecosystem services of the Marshlands are consistently undervalued in national economic analysis and decision making. This study focusses on the Central Marshes, the first National Park in Iraq, and is the first attempt at valuing a series of ecosystem services from a valuable natural ecosystem in Iraq. We adopted the Toolkit for Ecosystem Services Site-Based Assessment (TESSA) for the determination of biophysical and economic values of services at the site level. Data on key ecosystem se
... Show MoreThis study came to discuss the subject of industries dependent on petrochemical industries in Iraq (plastic as a model) during the period 2005–2020, and the study concluded that the plastic industries contribute to areas of advancement and progress and opportunities to deal efficiently with the challenges posed by the new variables, the most important of which is the information revolution. communications and trade liberalization, and this is what contributes to the competitiveness of these industries. And because the petrochemical industry in Iraq has an active role in establishing plastic industrial clusters and clusters of micro, small, and medium industries by providing the necessary feedstock for these industries in various fields
... Show MoreThe growing water demand has raised serious concerns about the future of irrigated agriculture in many parts all over the world, changing environmental conditions and shortage of water (especially in Iraq) have led to the need for a new system that efficiently manages the irrigation of crops. With the increasing population growing at a rapid pace, traditional agriculture will have a tough time meeting future food demands. Water availability and conservation are major concerns for farmers. The configuration of the smart irrigation system was designed based on data specific to the parameters concerning the characteristics of the plant and the properties of soil which are measured once i
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), characterized by hepatic fat accumulation in individuals consuming little or no alcohol, has become highly prevalent globally. Oxidative stress plays a central role in instigating inflammation and cell death pathways driving NAFLD progression. This case–control study aimed to elucidate the association between circulating levels of the pivotal non-enzymatic antioxidants – coenzyme Q10 and vitamins E and C – and liver injury parameters among 60 Iraqi NAFLD patients versus 30 healthy controls. NAFLD diagnosis entailed over 5% hepatic steatosis on ultrasound excluding other etiologies. Patients spanned three age groups: 20–29, 30–39, an
This study aimed to provide a conceptual model for the use and benefits of the e-Government as related to administrative fraud and financial corruption. The study also looked into their concepts, forms, dimensions and types and the role of e-Government on fraud reduction, corruption in administration and finance and its impact on the government performance. From the result, it is revealed that there is need for electronic government for implementation in order to curb the rate of fraud and administrative and financial corruption and improve the quality of service provision for better performance
In this research, a study is introduced on the effect of several environmental factors on the performance of an already constructed quality inspection system, which was designed using a transfer learning approach based on convolutional neural networks. The system comprised two sets of layers, transferred layers set from an already trained model (DenseNet121) and a custom classification layers set. It was designed to discriminate between damaged and undamaged helical gears according to the configuration of the gear regardless to its dimensions, and the model showed good performance discriminating between the two products at ideal conditions of high-resolution images. So, this study aimed at testing the system performance at poo
... Show MoreIn this research, a study is introduced on the effect of several environmental factors on the performance of an already constructed quality inspection system, which was designed using a transfer learning approach based on convolutional neural networks. The system comprised two sets of layers, transferred layers set from an already trained model (DenseNet121) and a custom classification layers set. It was designed to discriminate between damaged and undamaged helical gears according to the configuration of the gear regardless to its dimensions, and the model showed good performance discriminating between the two products at ideal conditions of high-resolution images.
So, this study aimed at testing the system performance at poor s
... Show MoreThe most significant function in oil exploration is determining the reservoir facies, which are based mostly on the primary features of rocks. Porosity, water saturation, and shale volume as well as sonic log and Bulk density are the types of input data utilized in Interactive Petrophysics software to compute rock facies. These data are used to create 15 clusters and four groups of rock facies. Furthermore, the accurate matching between core and well-log data is established by the neural network technique. In the current study, to evaluate the applicability of the cluster analysis approach, the result of rock facies from 29 wells derived from cluster analysis were utilized to redistribute the petrophysical properties for six units of Mishri
... Show MoreIn the last few years, the literature conferred a great interest in studying the feasibility of using memristive devices for computing. Memristive devices are important in structure, dynamics, as well as functionalities of artificial neural networks (ANNs) because of their resemblance to biological learning in synapses and neurons regarding switching characteristics of their resistance. Memristive architecture consists of a number of metastable switches (MSSs). Although the literature covered a variety of memristive applications for general purpose computations, the effect of low or high conductance of each MSS was unclear. This paper focuses on finding a potential criterion to calculate the conductance of each MMS rather t
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