The duration of sunshine is one of the important indicators and one of the variables for measuring the amount of solar radiation collected in a particular area. Duration of solar brightness has been used to study atmospheric energy balance, sustainable development, ecosystem evolution and climate change. Predicting the average values of sunshine duration (SD) for Duhok city, Iraq on a daily basis using the approach of artificial neural network (ANN) is the focus of this paper. Many different ANN models with different input variables were used in the prediction processes. The daily average of the month, average temperature, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, relative humidity, wind direction, cloud level and atmosp

In this study, the effect of fire flame on the punching shear strength of steel fiber reinforced concrete flat plates was experimentally investigated using nine half-scale specimens with dimensions of 1500×1500 mm and a total thickness of 100 mm. The main investigated variables comprised the steel fiber volume fraction 0, 1, and 1.5% and the burning steady state temperature 500 and 600 °C. The specimens were divided into three groups, each group consists of three specimens. The specimens in the first group were tested with no fire effect to be the reference specimens, while the others of the second and third groups were tested after being exposed to fire-flame effect. The adopted characteristics of the fire test were; (one hour) b

The present search aims to develop a test for selective attention, cognitive load and thinking mistakes and measuring these concepts among Baghdad university students. To make a comparison between the selective attention, cognitive load, and the mistakes of thinking among students in term of gender. To identify the relationship among the selective attention, cognitive load and the mistakes of thinking of university students. To achieve these purposes, the searcher has developed a test for selective attention, cognitive load, and the mistakes of thinking. Then, these tools were applied to a sample of (200) university students were selected from (21) college. The researcher used t-test of one sample, t-test of two independent

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a relatively new class of materials of unique porous structures and exceptional properties. Currently, more than 110,000 types of MOFs have been reported among the countless possibilities. In this study, we have synthesised a novel MOF using zirconium chloride as the metal source and 4,4'-dicarboxy-2,2'-biquinoline (bicinchoninic acid disodium salt) as the linker, which reacted in N,N-Dimethylformamide (DMF) solvent. Three preparation methods were employed to prepare five types of the MOF, and they were compared to optimize the synthesis conditions. The resulting MOFs, named Zr-BADS, were characterised using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), microscopy, and

In this work, ZnO quantum dots (Q.dots) and nanorods were prepared. ZnO quantum dots were prepared by self-assembly method of zinc acetate solution with KOH solution, while ZnO nanorods were prepared by hydrothermal method of zinc nitrate hexahydrate Zn (NO3)2.6H2O with hexamethy lenetetramin (HMT) C6H12N4. The optical , structural and spectroscopic properties of the product quantum dot were studied. The results show the dependence of the optical properties on the crystal dimension and the formation of the trap states in the energy band gap. The deep levels emission was studied for n-ZnO and p-ZnO. The preparation ZnO nanorods show semiconductor behavior of p-type, which is a difficult process by doping because native defects.

Research in consumer science has proven that grocery shopping is a complex and distressing process. Further, the task of generating the grocery lists for the grocery shopping is always undervalued as the effort and time took to create and manage the grocery lists are unseen and unrecognized. Even though grocery lists represent consumers’ purchase intention, research pertaining the grocery lists does not get much attention from researchers; therefore, limited studies about the topic are found in the literature. Hence, this study aims at bridging the gap by designing and developing a mobile app (application) for creating and managing grocery lists using modern smartphones. Smartphones are pervasive and become a necessity for everyone tod

In this paper, some estimators of the unknown shape parameter and reliability function  of Basic Gompertz distribution (BGD) have been obtained, such as MLE, UMVUE, and MINMSE, in addition to estimating Bayesian estimators under Scale invariant squared error loss function assuming informative prior represented by Gamma distribution and non-informative prior by using Jefferys prior. Using Monte Carlo simulation method, these estimators of the shape parameter and R(t), have been compared based on mean squared errors and integrated mean squared, respectively

ABSTRACT Objective: Cardiovascular diseases are the first ranked cause of death worldwide. Adhering to health promoting lifestyle behaviors will maintain an individual’s cardiovascular health and decrease the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Methods: In this descriptive study, 150 nursing faculty were surveyed via a non-probability (purposive) sampling method to assess their adherence to health promoting lifestyle in order to know the risk of cardiovascular diseases. The Arabic version of Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II (HPLP-II) was used to achieve this goal. Results: Seventy-two nursing faculty completed the survey. The results indicated that the study sample had moderate level of health promotion based on Health-Promot

Piperine, a crystalline alkaloid compound isolated from Piper nigrum, piper longum, and other types of piper, has had many fabulous pharmacological advantages for preventing and treating some specific diseases, such as analgesic, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, antimetastatic, antithyroid, immunomodulatory, antitumor, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, Alzheimer's, and improving the bioavailability of other drugs. However, its potential for clinical use through oral usage is hindered by water solubility and poor bioavailability. The low level of oral bioavailability is caused by low solubility in water and is photosensitive, susceptible to isomerization by UV light, which causes piperine concentration to decrease. Many different