Globally, Sustainability is very quickly becoming a fundamental requirement of the construction industry as it delivers its projects; whether buildings or infrastructures. Throughout more than two decades, many modeling schemes, evaluation tools, and rating systems have been introduced en route to realizing sustainable construction. Many of these, however, lack consensus on evaluation criteria, a robust scientific model that captures the logic behind their sustainability performance evaluation, and therefore experience discrepancies between rated results and actual performance. Moreover, very few of the evaluation tools available satisfactorily address infrastructure projects. The research introduces a system engineering model that abstracts the environment, the construction product, and its production system as three interacting systems that exchange materials, energy, and information. The model utilizes this setup to capture and quantify essential flows exchanged between such three systems, to evaluate sustainability. The research walks through the development of a generic case of the model, and then demonstrates its utility in evaluating the sustainability performance of civil infrastructure projects. The developed model will address an identified gap within the current body of knowledge by considering infrastructure projects. Through the ability to simulate different scenarios, the model will enable identifying which activities, products, and processes impact the environment more, and hence potential areas for optimization and improvement.
The objective of this study is to verify the overall performance and evaluate the wastewater quality of the wastewater treatment plant at the Abu Ghraib Dairy Factory and compare the results with the Iraqi Quality Standards (IQS) for effluent disposal and with the national determinants of treated water use. Agricultural irrigation wastewater, which included daily assessment records of the main parameters affecting wastewater [five-day biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total dissolved solids (T.D.S), total suspended solids (TSS), phosphate (PO4), nitrate (NO3), hydrogen ion concentration (pH)] obtained from the quality control department of Abu Ghraib dairy plant registered from January 2017 to December 2020. Th
... Show MoreRapid and accurate identification of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus is essential in limiting the spread of this bacterium. The aim of study is the detection of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and determining their susceptibility to some antimicrobial agent. A total of fifty clinical Staphylococcus aureus, isolated from the nose of health work staff in surgery unit of Kalar general hospital and from ear of patients attended to the same hospital. The susceptibilities of isolates were determined by the disc diffusion method with oxacillin (1 ?g) and cefoxitin (30 ?g), and by the mannitol salt agar supplemented with cefoxitin (MSA-CFOX), susceptibilities of isolates to other antimicrobial agent were determined b
... Show MoreSteganography is defined as hiding confidential information in some other chosen media without leaving any clear evidence of changing the media's features. Most traditional hiding methods hide the message directly in the covered media like (text, image, audio, and video). Some hiding techniques leave a negative effect on the cover image, so sometimes the change in the carrier medium can be detected by human and machine. The purpose of suggesting hiding information is to make this change undetectable. The current research focuses on using complex method to prevent the detection of hiding information by human and machine based on spiral search method, the Structural Similarity Index Metrics measures are used to get the accuracy and quality
... Show MoreCalculating the Inverse Kinematic (IK) equations is a complex problem due to the nonlinearity of these equations. Choosing the end effector orientation affects the reach of the target location. The Forward Kinematics (FK) of Humanoid Robotic Legs (HRL) is determined by using DenavitHartenberg (DH) method. The HRL has two legs with five Degrees of Freedom (DoF) each. The paper proposes using a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm to optimize the best orientation angle of the end effector of HRL. The selected orientation angle is used to solve the IK equations to reach the target location with minimum error. The performance of the proposed method is measured by six scenarios with different simulated positions of the legs. The proposed
... Show MoreBioethanol produced from lignocellulose feedstock is a renewable substitute to declining fossil fuels. Pretreatment using ultrasound assisted alkaline was investigated to enhance the enzyme digestibility of waste paper. The pretreatment was conducted over a wide range of conditions including waste paper concentrations of 1-5%, reaction time of 10-30 min and temperatures of 30-70°C. The optimum conditions were 4 % substrate loading with 25 min treatment time at 60°C where maximum reducing sugar obtained was 1.89 g/L. Hydrolysis process was conducted with a crude cellulolytic enzymes produced by Cellulomonas uda (PTCC 1259).The maximum amount of sugar released and hydrolysis efficiency were 20.92 g/L and 78.4 %, respectively. Sugars
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Seeking happiness and searching for it have been among the priorities of mankind from the beginning of his creation and will remain so until the end of this world, and even in the next life, he seeks happiness, but the difference is that a person can work in this world to obtain it, but in the next life he is expected to get what he done in this world. And among these reasons are practical actions that a person undertakes while he intends to draw close to God Almighty, so they lead him to attain his desired perfection, and to attain his goals and objectives, which is the minimum happiness in this life, and ultimate happiness after the soul separates the body, and on the day of the judgment, Amon
... Show MoreThe permeability determination in the reservoirs that are anisotropic and heterogeneous is a complicated problem due to the limited number of wells that contain core samples and well test data. This paper presents hydraulic flow units and flow zone indicator for predicting permeability of rock mass from core for Nahr-Umr reservoir/ Subba field. The Permeability measurement is better found in the laboratory work on the cored rock that taken from the formation. Nahr-Umr Formation is the main lower cretaceous sandstone reservoir in southern of Iraq. This formation is made up mainly of sandstone. Nahr-Umr formation was deposited on a gradually rising basin floor. The digenesis of Nahr-Umr sediments is very important du
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