Regression Discontinuity (RD) means a study that exposes a definite group to the effect of a treatment. The uniqueness of this design lies in classifying the study population into two groups based on a specific threshold limit or regression point, and this point is determined in advance according to the terms of the study and its requirements. Thus , thinking was focused on finding a solution to the issue of workers retirement and trying to propose a scenario to attract the idea of granting an end-of-service reward to fill the gap ( discontinuity point) if it had not been granted. The regression discontinuity method has been used to study and to estimate the effect of the end -service reward on the cutoff of insured workers as well as t

HM Al-Dabbas, RA Azeez, AE Ali, Iraqi Journal of Science, 2023

For several applications, it is very important to have an edge detection technique matching human visual contour perception and less sensitive to noise. The edge detection algorithm describes in this paper based on the results obtained by Maximum a posteriori (MAP) and Maximum Entropy (ME) deblurring algorithms. The technique makes a trade-off between sharpening and smoothing the noisy image. One of the advantages of the described algorithm is less sensitive to noise than that given by Marr and Geuen techniques that considered to be the best edge detection algorithms in terms of matching human visual contour perception.

The rapid rise in the use of artificially generated faces has significantly increased the risk of identity theft in biometric authentication systems. Modern facial recognition technologies are now vulnerable to sophisticated attacks using printed images, replayed videos, and highly realistic 3D masks. This creates an urgent need for advanced, reliable, and mobile-compatible fake face detection systems. Research indicates that while deep learning models have demonstrated strong performance in detecting artificially generated faces, deploying these models on consumer mobile devices remains challenging due to limitations in computing power, memory, privacy, and processing speed. This paper highlights several key challenges: (1) optimiz

Individuals across different industries, including but not limited to agriculture, drones, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing, are increasingly using thermal cameras to achieve various safety and security goals. This widespread adoption is made possible by advancements in thermal imaging sensor technology. The current literature provides an in-depth exploration of thermography camera applications for detecting faults in sectors such as fire protection, manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, non-destructive testing and structural material industries. The current discussion builds on previous studies, emphasising the effectiveness of thermography cameras in distinguishing undetectable defects by the human eye. Various methods for defect

Pavement crack and pothole identification are important tasks in transportation maintenance and road safety. This study offers a novel technique for automatic asphalt pavement crack and pothole detection which is based on image processing. Different types of cracks (transverse, longitudinal, alligator-type, and potholes) can be identified with such techniques. The goal of this research is to evaluate road surface damage by extracting cracks and potholes, categorizing them from images and videos, and comparing the manual and the automated methods. The proposed method was tested on 50 images. The results obtained from image processing showed that the proposed method can detect cracks and potholes and identify their severity levels wit

Voice Activity Detection (VAD) is considered as an important pre-processing step in speech processing systems such as speech enhancement, speech recognition, gender and age identification. VAD helps in reducing the time required to process speech data and to improve final system accuracy by focusing the work on the voiced part of the speech. An automatic technique for VAD using Fuzzy-Neuro technique (FN-AVAD) is presented in this paper. The aim of this work is to alleviate the problem of choosing the best threshold value in traditional VAD methods and achieves automaticity by combining fuzzy clustering and machine learning techniques. Four features are extracted from each speech segment, which are short term energy, zero-crossing rate, auto

The seizure epilepsy is risky because it happens randomly and leads to death in some cases. The standard epileptic seizures monitoring system involves video/EEG (electro-encephalography), which bothers the patient, as EEG electrodes are attached to the patient’s head.

Seriously, helping or alerting the patient before the seizure is one of the issue that attracts the researchers and designers attention. So that there are spectrums of portable seizure detection systems available in markets which are based on non-EEG signal.

The aim of this article is to provide a literature survey for the latest articles that cover many issues in the field of designing portable real-time seizure detection that includes the use of multiple

Physical and chemical adsorption analyses were carried out by nitrogen gas using ASTM apparatus at 77 K and hydrogen gas using volumetric apparatus at room temperature respectively. These analyses were used for determination the effect of coke deposition and poisoning metal on surface area, pore size distribution and metal surface area of fresh and spent hydrodesulphurization catalyst Co-MoAl2O3 .Samples of catalyst (fresh and spent) used in this study are taken from AL-Dura refinery. The results of physical adsorption shows that surface area of spent catalyst reduced to third compare with fresh catalyst and these catalysts exhibit behavior of type four according to BET classification ,so, the pores of these samples are cylindrical, and the