Gypseous soils are distributed in many regions in the world including Iraq, which cover more than (31%) of the surface area of the country. Existence of these soils, always with high gypsum content, caused difficult problems to the buildings and strategic projects due to dissolution and leaching of the gypsum caused by the action of water flow through soil mass. For the study, the gypseous soil was brought from Bahr Al-Najaf, Al-Najaf Governorate which is located in the middle of Iraq. The model pile was embedded in gypseous soil with 42% gypsum content. Compression axial model pile load tests have been carried out for model pile embedded in gypseous soil at initial degree of saturation of (7%) before and after soil satu

The approach of greening existing buildings, is an urgent necessity, because the greening operation provides the speed and optimal efficiency in the environmental performance, as well as keeping up with the global green architecture revolution. Therefore, greening existing buildings in Iraq is important for trends towards renewable energies, because of what the country went through economic conditions and crises and wars which kept the country away from what took place globally in this issue. The research problem is: insufficient knowledge about the importance and the mechanism of the greening of existing buildings, including its environmental and economic dimensions, by rationalization of energy consumption and preservi

Wastewater projects are one of the most important infrastructure projects, which require developing strategic plans to manage these projects. Most of the wastewater projects in Iraq don’t have a maintenance plan. This research aims to prepare the maintenance management plan (MMP) for wastewater projects. The objective of the research is to predict the cost and time of maintenance projects by building a model using ANN. The research sample included (15) completed projects in Wasit Governorate, where the researcher was able to obtain the data of these projects through the historical information of the Wasit Sewage Directorate. In this research artificial neural networks (ANN) technique was used to build two models (cost

The construction of embankment for roadway interchange system at urban area is restricted due to the large geometry requirements, since the value of land required for such construction is high, and the area available is limited as compared to rural area. One of the optimum solutions to such problem is the earth reinforcement technique which requires a limited area for embankment construction. Gypseous soil from Al-Anbar governorate area was obtained and subjected to various physical and chemical analysis to determine it is properties. A laboratory model box of 50x50x25 cm was used as a representative embankment; soil has been compacted in five layers at maximum dry density (modified compaction) and an aluminum reinforcement strips were i

The convolutional neural networks (CNN) are among the most utilized neural networks in various applications, including deep learning. In recent years, the continuing extension of CNN into increasingly complicated domains has made its training process more difficult. Thus, researchers adopted optimized hybrid algorithms to address this problem. In this work, a novel chaotic black hole algorithm-based approach was created for the training of CNN to optimize its performance via avoidance of entrapment in the local minima. The logistic chaotic map was used to initialize the population instead of using the uniform distribution. The proposed training algorithm was developed based on a specific benchmark problem for optical character recog

     Klebsiella pneumoniae is among the most frequent microorganisms isolated from infections of burn wounds. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the distribution of multi-drug resistant (MDR) K. pneumoniae in two burn hospitals and the antibiotic resistance profile in different burn regions of the same patient. It was performed in two hospitals (Al-Zahraa and Al-Karama) in Al-Kut, Iraq, between January and May 2022. Totally, 100 burn swabs were collected from 40 patients of both genders suffering from burn wound infections, with ages ranging between 3 and 50 years. Klebsiella pneumoniae were isolated and identified using conventional methods followed by VITEK®2 system and confirmed via polymerase chain reaction targeting t

In this study, cloud point extraction combined with molecular spectrometry as an eco-friendly method is used for extraction, enrichment and determination of bendiocarb (BC) insecticide in different complex matrices. The method involved an alkaline hydrolysis of BC followed Emerson reaction in which the resultant phenol is reacted with 4-aminoantipyrene(4-AAP) in the presence of an alkaline oxidant of potassium ferric cyanide to form red colored product which then extracted into micelles of Triton X-114 as a mediated extractant at room temperature. The extracted product in cloud point layer is separated from the aqueous layer by centrifugation for 20 min and dissolved in a minimum amount of a mixture ethanol: water (1:1) followed

Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles were synthesized using a modified hydrothermal approach at different reaction temperatures and growth times. Moreover, a thorough morphological, structural and optical investigation was demonstrated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), ultra-violate visible light spectroscopy (UV-Vis.), and photoluminescence (PL) techniques. Notably, SEM analysis revealed the occurrence of nanorods-shaped surface morphology with a wide range of length and diameter. Meanwhile, a hexagonal crystal structure of the ZnO nanoparticles was perceived using XRD analysis and crystallite size ranging from 14.7 to 23.8 nm at 7 and 8 ℎ𝑟𝑠., respectively. The prepared ZnO samples showed good abso