The construction industry plays a crucial role in the countries' economy, especially in the developed country. This point encourages the concerned institution to use new techniques and integrate many techniques and methods to maximize the benefits. The main objective of this research is to evaluate the use of risk management, value management, and building information modeling in the Iraqi construction industry. The evaluation process aims at two objectives. The direct objective was to evaluate the knowledge in risk management (RM), value management (VM), and building information modeling (BIM). The indirect objective was to support the participants with information related to the main items mentioned. The questionnaire

In this paper, an experimental study was conducted to enhance the thermal performance of a double-pass solar air heater (SAH) using phase change material (PCM) for thermal storage at climatic conditions of Baghdad city - Iraq. The double-pass solar air heater integrated with thermal storage system was manufactured and tested to ensure that the air heating reserved after the absence of the sun. The rectangular cavity filled with paraffin wax was used as a latent heat storage and incorporated into the lower channel of solar air heater. Experiments were carried out to evaluate the charging and discharging characteristics of two similar designed solar air collectors with and without using phase change material at a constant

The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of corrosive environment (corrosive ferric chloride of 1, 2, 5, 6% wt. at room temperature), immersion period of (48, 72, 96, 120, 144 hours), and surface roughness on pitting corrosion characteristics and use the data to build an artificial neural network and test its ability to predict the depth and intensity of pitting corrosion in a variety of conditions. Pit density and depth were calculated using a pitting corrosion test on carbon steel (C-4130). Pitting corrosion experimental tests were used to develop artificial neural network (ANN) models for predicting pitting corrosion characteristics. It was found that artificial neural network models were shown to be

Purpose This study investigated periodontal ligament (PDL) restoration in osseointegrated implants using stem cells. Methods Commercial pure titanium and zirconium oxide (zirconia) were coated with beta-tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP) using a long-pulse Nd:YAG laser (1,064 nm). Isolated bone marrow mesenchymal cells (BMMSCs) from rabbit tibia and femur, isolated PDL stem cells (PDLSCs) from the lower right incisor, and co-cultured BMMSCs and PDLSCs were tested for periostin markers using an immunofluorescent assay. Implants with 3D-engineered tissue were implanted into the lower right central incisors after extraction from rabbits. Forty implants (Ti or zirconia) were subdivided according to the duration of implantation (healing period: 45 o

Recently, increasing material prices coupled with more acute environmental awareness and the implementation of regulation has driven a strong movement toward the adoption of sustainable construction technology. In the pavement industry, using low temperature asphalt mixes and recycled concrete aggregate are viewed as effective engineering solutions to address the challenges posed by climate change and sustainable development. However, to date, no research has investigated these two factors simultaneously for pavement material. This paper reports on initial work which attempts to address this shortcoming. At first, a novel treatment method is used to improve the quality of recycled concrete coarse aggregates. Thereafter, the treated recycled

The exponential growth of audio data shared over the internet and communication channels has raised significant concerns about the security and privacy of transmitted information. Due to high processing requirements, traditional encryption algorithms demand considerable computational effort for real-time audio encryption. To address these challenges, this paper presents a permutation for secure audio encryption using a combination of Tent and 1D logistic maps. The audio data is first shuffled using Tent map for the random permutation. The high random secret key with a length equal to the size of the audio data is then generated using a 1D logistic map. Finally, the Exclusive OR (XOR) operation is applied between the generated key and the sh

Contours extraction from two dimensional echocardiographic images has been a challenge in digital image processing. This is essentially due to the heavy noise, poor quality of these images and some artifacts like papillary muscles, intra-cavity structures as chordate, and valves that can interfere with the endocardial border tracking. In this paper, we will present a technique to extract the contours of heart boundaries from a sequence of echocardiographic images, where it started with pre-processing to reduce noise and produce better image quality. By pre-processing the images, the unclear edges are avoided, and we can get an accurate detection of both heart boundary and movement of heart valves.

The phytoremediation technique has become very efficient for treating soil contaminated with heavy metals. In this study, a pot experiment was conducted where the Dodonaea plant (known as hops) was grown, and soil previously contaminated with metals (Zn, Ni, Cd) was added at concentrations 100, 50, 0 mg·kg-1 for Ni and Zn, and at concentrations of 0, 5, 10 mg·kg-1 for cadmium. Irrigation was done within the limits of the field capacity of the soil. Cadmium, nickel and zinc was estimated in the soil to find out the capacity of plants to the absorption of heavy and contaminated metals by using bioconcentration factors (BCFs), bioaccumulation coefficient (BAC) and translocation factor (TF). Additionally, BCF values of both Ni and Zn were l