Most reinforced concrete (RC) structures are constructed with square/rectangular columns. The cross-section size of these types of columns is much larger than the thickness of their partitions. Therefore, parts of these columns are protruded out of the partitions. The emergence of columns edges out of the walls has some disadvantages. This limitation is difficult to be overcome with square or rectangular columns. To solve this problem, new types of RC columns called specially shaped reinforced concrete (SSRC) columns have been used as hidden columns. Besides, the use of SSRC columns provides many structural and architectural advantages as compared with rectangular columns. Therefore, this study was conducted to explain the structura

The global rise in temperature and the desert climatic conditions prevalent in Middle Eastern countries have exacerbated rutting distress in heavily trafficked highways. Conventional asphalt binders with a high-temperature performance grade (PG 70) have proven inadequate under such extreme conditions, necessitating the development of modified binders with enhanced high-temperature performance. While polymer modification using styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS), an elastomeric polymer, and ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), a plastomeric polymer, has been widely studied, limited research provides a direct comparison of their effectiveness at both the binder and mixture levels under extremely high-temperature conditions. This study addresses this gap

A design for a photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) assembly with a water-cooled heat sink was planned, constructed, and experimentally evaluated in the climatic conditions of the southern region of Iraq during the summertime. The water-cooled heat sink was applied to thermally manage the PV cells, in order to boost the electrical output of the PVT system. A set of temperature sensors was installed to monitor the water intake, exit, and cell temperatures. The climatic parameters including the wind velocity, atmospheric pressure, and solar irradiation were also monitored on a daily basis. The effects of solar irradiation on the average PV temperature, electrical power, and overall electrical-thermal efficiency were investigated. The findings i

This paper presents a new algorithm in an important research field which is the semantic word similarity estimation. A new feature-based algorithm is proposed for measuring the word semantic similarity for the Arabic language. It is a highly systematic language where its words exhibit elegant and rigorous logic. The score of sematic similarity between two Arabic words is calculated as a function of their common and total taxonomical features. An Arabic knowledge source is employed for extracting the taxonomical features as a set of all concepts that subsumed the concepts containing the compared words. The previously developed Arabic word benchmark datasets are used for optimizing and evaluating the proposed algorithm. In this paper,

This research aims primarily to highlight personal tax exemptions A comparative study with some Arab and European regulations. And by conducting both theoretical comparative analyses. Most important findings of the study is the need to grant personal and family exemptions that differ according to the civil status of the taxpayer (single or married). In other words, the exemption increases as the number of family members depend on its social sense. Also taking into account some incomes that require a certain effort and looking at the tax rates, it is unreasonable for wages to be subject to the same rates applied to commercial profits.      

To finalize any construction investment project, it would be necessary to identify the most significant problems and obstacles that lead to project reluctance and stalling. Unexpected events and conflicts may have disrupted these strategies and impacted project development. Due to the high initial investment costs of construction projects, crises can have an immediate impact, resulting in significant financial losses. The 2014 financial crisis was one of the most prominent crises that Iraq faced, which prompted the researcher to identify and evaluate those obstacles through this research and questionnaires using Pareto scientific theory to exclude factors that do not contribute to project lag. It was discovered that 28 o

MPEG-DASH is an adaptive bitrate streaming technology that divides video content into small HTTP-objects file segments with different bitrates. With live UHD video streaming latency is the most important problem. In this paper, creating a low-delay streaming system using HTTP 2.0. Based on the network condition the proposed system adaptively determine the bitrate of segments. The video is coded using a layered H.265/HEVC compression standard, then is tested to investigate the relationship between video quality and bitrate for various HEVC parameters and video motion at each layer/resolution. The system architecture includes encoder/decoder configurations and how to embedded the adaptive video streaming. The encoder includes compression besi

In this paper, RBF-based multistage auto-encoders are used to detect IDS attacks. RBF has numerous applications in various actual life settings. The planned technique involves a two-part multistage auto-encoder and RBF. The multistage auto-encoder is applied to select top and sensitive features from input data. The selected features from the multistage auto-encoder is wired as input to the RBF and the RBF is trained to categorize the input data into two labels: attack or no attack. The experiment was realized using MATLAB2018 on a dataset comprising 175,341 case, each of which involves 42 features and is authenticated using 82,332 case. The developed approach here has been applied for the first time, to the knowledge of the authors, to dete

The world is currently facing a medical crisis. The epidemic has affected millions of people around the world since its appearance. This situation needs an urgent solution. Most countries have used different solutions to stop the spread of the epidemic. The World Health Organization has imposed some rules that people should adhere. The rules are such, wearing masks, quarantining infected people and social distancing. Social distancing is one of the most important solutions that have given good results to confront the emerging virus. Several systems have been developed that use artificial intelligence and deep learning to track social distancing. In this study, a system based on deep learning has been proposed. The system includes monitor

      Products’ quality inspection is an important stage in every production route, in which the quality of the produced goods is estimated and compared with the desired specifications. With traditional inspection, the process rely on manual methods that generates various costs and large time consumption. On the contrary, today’s inspection systems that use modern techniques like computer vision, are more accurate and efficient. However, the amount of work needed to build a computer vision system based on classic techniques is relatively large, due to the issue of manually selecting and extracting features from digital images, which also produces labor costs for the system engineers.       In this research, we pr