Heavy metal (HM) pollution has long been a significant source of environmental deterioration and a problem for the safety of food. Iraqis prefer rice over any other food, and since heavy metals have a direct impact on health, their traces in rice have drawn particular attention. Before cooking rice, it is usual in Iraq to wash and soak it. Some 55 varieties of imported and local rice were sampled from Erbil city markets in 2022 with the aim of determining the concentration of As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb before and after soaking. Standard procedure of acid digestions was applied on the raw and soaked samples. The solutions were analyzed using ICPE-9820 Shimadzu. The mean concentrations of As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb (in mg/kg) in the rice samples before soaking was 0.655, 0.170, 0.160, 0.387, 0.489, respectively and after soaking 0.421, 0.109, 0.115, 0.124 and 0.336, respectively. The concentration of As and Pb was found to be beyond the optimum level of 0.2 mg/kg codex standards for rice; whereas Cd and Cr were within the proposed level of codex standards. Moreover, local rice showed higher concentration of (Cd and Cr), whereas (AS and Pb) concentration in imported rice was higher. Further, results validated that rice soaking can decrease levels of As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb (32.5%, 40.2%, 27.9%, 61.6% and 31.3%, respectively). These findings suggest that soaking as a kitchen practice has efficiency to evaporate metals and has a great influence on the reduction of toxic heavy metals and thus reduces exposure to toxic metals in rice
Abstract—The upper limb amputation exerts a significant burden on the amputee, limiting their ability to perform everyday activities, and degrading their quality of life. Amputee patients’ quality of life can be improved if they have natural control over their prosthetic hands. Among the biological signals, most commonly used to predict upper limb motor intentions, surface electromyography (sEMG), and axial acceleration sensor signals are essential components of shoulder-level upper limb prosthetic hand control systems. In this work, a pattern recognition system is proposed to create a plan for categorizing high-level upper limb prostheses in seven various types of shoulder girdle motions. Thus, combining seven feature groups, w
... Show MoreThis paper aims at analyzing Terry Bisson’s short story Bears Discover Fire stylistically by following both Gerard Genette’s theory of narratology (1980) and Short and Leech (1981) strategy for analyzing fictional works. Also trying to examine to what extent these models are applicable in analyzing the selected story. Stylistic analysis procedures help the readers/researchers to identify specific linguistic features in order to support literary interpretation and appreciation of literary texts. Style in fiction concentrates not on what is written, but on how a text is written. Each writer has his own style and techniques which distinguish him from other writers
Photonic crystal fiber interferometers are used in many sensing applications. In this work, an in-reflection photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based on Mach-Zehnder (micro-holes collapsing) (MZ) interferometer, which exhibits high sensitivity to different volatile organic compounds (VOCs), without the needing of any permeable material. The interferometer is robust, compact, and consists of a stub photonic crystal fiber of large-mode area, photonic crystal fiber spliced to standard single mode fiber (SMF) (corning-28), this splicing occurs with optimized splice loss 0.19 dB In the splice regions the voids of the holey fiber are completely collapsed, which allows the excitation and recombination of core and cladding modes. The device reflection
... Show MoreGlobally, the COVID-19 pandemic’s development has presented significant societal and economic challenges. The carriers of COVID-19 transmission have also been identified as asymptomatic infected people. Yet, most epidemic models do not consider their impact when accounting for the disease’s indirect transmission. This study suggested and investigated a mathematical model replicating the spread of coronavirus disease among asymptomatic infected people. A study was conducted on every aspect of the system’s solution. The equilibrium points and the basic reproduction number were computed. The endemic equilibrium point and the disease-free equilibrium point had both undergone local stability analyses. A geometric technique was used
... Show MoreWater/oil emulsion is considered as the most refractory mixture to separate because of the interference of the two immiscible liquids, water and oil. This research presents a study of dewatering of water / kerosene emulsion using hydrocyclone. The effects of factors such as: feed flow rate (3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 L/min), inlet water concentration of the emulsion (5%, 7.5%, 10%, 12.5%, and 15% by volume), and split ratio (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9) on the separation efficiency and pressure drop were studied. Dimensional analysis using Pi theorem was applied for the first time to model the hydrocyclone based on the experimental data. It was shown that the maximum separation efficiency; at split ratio 0.1, was 94.3% at 10% co
... Show MoreAsphaltene is one of the fractions of the crude oil which is soluble in aromatics such as benzene or toluene and insoluble in alkane such as n-heptane, n-pentane or petroleum ether (mixture of alkane compounds). Asphaltene precipitation is one of the most common problems that sometimes occurs in both oil recovery and refinery processes as a result of changing in pressure, oil composition, or temperature. Therefore the stability of asphaltene in the crude oil must be studied to show the tendency of it for precipitating asphaltene to prevent it (Asphaltene precipitation and deposition problem) and eliminate the burden of high treatment costs.
In the present study, saturate, aromatic, resin and asphaltene (SAR
... Show MoreDue to wind wave actions, ships impacts, high-speed vehicles and others resources of loading, structures such as high buildings rise bridge and electric transmission towers undergo significant coupled moment loads. In this study, the effect of increasing the value of coupled moment and increasing the rigidity of raft footing on the horizontal deflection by using 3-D finite element using ABAQUS program. The results showed that the increasing the coupled moment value leads to an increase in lateral deflection and increase in the rotational angle (α◦). The rotational angle increases from (0.014, 0.15 to 0.19) at coupled moment (120 kN.m), (0.29, 0.31 and 0.49) at coupled moment (240 kN.m) and (0.57, 0.63 and 1.03) at cou
... Show MoreFriction stir welding (FSW) of Tee-joints is obtained by inserting a specially designed rotating pin into the clamped blanks, through top plate (skin) to bottom plate (stringer), and then moving it along the joint, limiting the contact between the tool shoulder and the skin. The present work aims to investigate the defects occur for Tee-joint of an Aluminum alloy (Al 5456) with dimensions (180mm x 70mm) for the skin plate, (180mm x 30mm) for stringer plate and thickness of (4mm).
The effects of welding parameters such as rotational speed, linear speed, plunging depth, tool tilting, and die radii of welding fixture on the welding quality of Aluminum Alloy will be studied. Weld defects had been summarized and studied, and then the best
The economical design of plate loaded by pressure can be obtained by using stiffeners instead of increasing the thickness of plate. The main subject of this work is to obtain the effect of stiffener height on the maximum stress in the plate subjected to pressure load. Different plate-stiffener sets are selected to find the effects of stiffener thickness, plate dimensions and pressure, on the optimum stiffener height. The models under consideration are square plates clamped rigidly from four edges. Finite Element method is used to analyze 160 different models by using the Finite Element software package ANSYS version 11. Another analysis method based on maximum stress equation is used to analyze 30 models. The graphical comparison of results
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