The Red Palm Weevil (RPW), Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier, 1790) is a devastating invasive pest of palm trees, invading the Iraqi date palm tree in 2015 for the first time in Safwan county, Basrah province. The Red Palm weevil has been categorized as a quarantine pest of date palm trees worldwide. In this study, a five years monitoring program has been achieved by scouting the invasive pest RPW population in Safwan county by using visual sampling and Pheromone baited traps.
The results indicated that the number of infested palms, increased from 12 trees in 2015 to 111 in 16 orchards in 2016. The number of the infested palms was minimized to 3 trees in the county in 2019 due to the management protocol of the Ministry of Agriculture. Furthermore, the results of RPW adults appeared monthly in the county with two activity peaks during the moderate-temperature-months.
In conclusion, the quarantine and management protocol of RPW decreased the population of the invasive pest which did not spread to other districts of Iraq.
Thyroid disease is a common disease affecting millions worldwide. Early diagnosis and treatment of thyroid disease can help prevent more serious complications and improve long-term health outcomes. However, thyroid disease diagnosis can be challenging due to its variable symptoms and limited diagnostic tests. By processing enormous amounts of data and seeing trends that may not be immediately evident to human doctors, Machine Learning (ML) algorithms may be capable of increasing the accuracy with which thyroid disease is diagnosed. This study seeks to discover the most recent ML-based and data-driven developments and strategies for diagnosing thyroid disease while considering the challenges associated with imbalanced data in thyroid dise
... Show MoreEncasing glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) beam with reinforced concrete (RC) improves stability, prevents buckling of the web, and enhances the fire resistance efficiency. This paper provides experimental and numerical investigations on the flexural performance of RC specimens composite with encased pultruded GFRP I-sections. The effect of using shear studs to improve the composite interaction between the GFRP beam and concrete was explored. Three specimens were tested under three-point loading. The deformations, strains in the GFRP beams, and slippages between the GFRP beams and concrete were recorded. The embedded GFRP beam enhanced the peak loads by 65% and 51% for the composite specimens with and without shear connectors,
... Show MoreThe improvement in Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation when the received signals impinge on Active-Parasitic Antenna (APA) arrays will be studied in this work. An APA array consists of several active antennas; others are parasitic antennas. The responses to the received signals are measured at the loaded terminals of the active element. The terminals of the parasitic element are shorted. The effect of the received signals on the parasites, i.e., the induced short-circuit current, is mutually coupled to the active elements. Eigen decomposition of the covariance matrix of the measurements of the APA array generates a third subspace in addition to the traditional signal and noise subspaces generated by the all-active ante
... Show MoreThe complexity and partially defined nature of jet grouting make it hard to predict the performance of grouted piles. So the trials of cement injection at a location with similar soil properties as the erecting site are necessary to assess the performance of the grouted piles. Nevertheless, instead of executing trial-injected piles at the pilot site, which wastes money, time, and effort, the laboratory cement injection devices are essential alternatives for evaluating soil injection ability. This study assesses the performance of a low-pressure laboratory grouting device by improving loose sandy soil injected using binders formed of Silica Fume (SF) as a chemical admixture (10% of Ordinary Portland Cement OPC mass) to di
... Show MoreWater quality planning relies on Biochemical Oxygen Demand BOD. BOD testing takes five days. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is increasingly used for water resource forecasting. This work designed a PSO technique for estimating everyday BOD at Al-Rustumiya wastewater treatment facility inlet. Al-Rustumiya wastewater treatment plant provided 702 plant-scale data sets during 2012-2022. The PSO model uses the daily data of the water quality parameters, including chemical oxygen demand (COD), chloride (Cl-), suspended solid (SS), total dissolved solids (TDS), and pH, to determine how each variable affects the daily incoming BOD. PSO and multiple linear regression (MLR) findings are compared, and their perfor
... Show MoreIn this study, the flexural performance of a new composite beam–slab system filled with concrete material was investigated, where this system was mainly prepared from lightweight cold-formed steel sections of a beam and a deck slab for carrying heavy floor loads as another concept of a conventional composite system with a lower cost impact. For this purpose, seven samples of a profile steel sheet–dry board deck slab (PSSDB/PDS) carried by a steel cold-formed C-purlins beam (CB) were prepared and named “composite CBPDS specimen”, which were tested under a static bending load. Specifically, the effects of the profile steel sheet (PSS) direction (parallel or perpendicular to the span of the specimen) using different C-purlins c
... Show MoreStrategies to reduce obesity have become main priority for many health institution and health staff around the world, as the prevalence of obesity has risen and exacerbated in most of the world mainly because of the modern life style which tend to be more sedentary with an increase eating unhealthy fast western food. Many years ago, the lipid-lowering drug simvastatin; and omega-3 were considered as a traditional lipid-lowering drug that have been well-documented to possess anti-inflammatory, cardioprotective and triglyceride-lowering properties; and their co-administration may demonstrate a complementary effect in lowering patients' triglycerides and total cholesterol to treat atherosclerosis. Many previous studies have
... Show MoreErosion and deposition are natural phenomena in many estuaries that can cause morphological changes, leading to navigation and offshore structure problems. Many previous studies have focused on investigating the morphological changes of estuaries depending on different parameters and their combined effects with erosion and deposition processes, such as maximum flow amplitude, waves, currents, tidal flow, storms, rising sea elevation, maximum turbidity, salinity, and bed roughness height as input parameters. These studies are based on field measurements and numerical simulations by using topographic surveys, soil samples, satellite images, geological data, and bathymetric maps with the aid of ArcGIS. Some of these studies examine the
... Show MoreThis study presents a novel, custom‑built fluorescence detector for the precise determination of chloride and iodide ions based on their quenching effect on fluorescein. The detection system incorporates eight blue LEDs irradiation sources arranged at 0–90° angles relative to twin solar cell detectors connected. Two fluorescence quenching strategies were developed. The injected‑mixture mode (IMFQ) exhibited linear ranges of 0.00–1.00 mM for Cl⁻ and 0.00–1.25 mM for I⁻, with detection limits of 20 µM and 10 µmol L⁻¹, respectively. The continuous‑flow mode (CFFQ) demonstrated superior sensitivity with a dispersion factor of 1.33, wider linear ranges (0.1–6.0 m
This study reports testing results of the transient response of T-shape concrete deep beams with large openings due to impact loading. Seven concrete deep beams with openings including two ordinary reinforced, four partially prestressed, and one solid ordinary reinforced as a reference beam were fabricated and tested. The effects of prestressing strand position and the intensity of the impact force were investigated. Two values for the opening’s depth relative to the beam cross-section dimensions were inspected under the effect of an impacting mass repeatedly dropped from different heights. The study revealed that the beam’s transient deflection was increased by about 50% with gre