A concept of indoor solar illumination is described and simulated. The solar illumination system is composed of a tracking primary reflector, a selective secondary reflector, a visible light guide and a scattering solid glass tube fixture. Each part of the solar illumination system is optically suited and compatible with other parts to realize high efficiency. The simulation is conducted for Baghdad city for a library hall. Two major days over a year are chosen to investigate the illumination system for acceptable visible light level for reading hall. The two days are: summer solstice day and winter solstice day at 8:00 AM and 12:00 PM for each. Research results showed that the design of the solar system is achieved on the base of minimu

To decrease the dependency of producing high octane number gasoline on the catalytic processes in petroleum refineries and to increase the gasoline pool, the effect of adding a suggested formula of composite blending octane number enhancer to motor gasoline composed of a mixture of oxygenated materials (ethanol and ether) and aromatic materials (toluene and xylene) was investigated by design of experiments made by Mini Tab 15 statistical software. The original gasoline before addition of the octane number blending enhancer has a value of (79) research octane number (RON). The design of experiments which study the optimum volumetric percentages of the four variables, ethanol, toluene, and ether and xylene materials leads

         The issue of penalized regression model has received considerable critical attention to variable selection. It plays an essential role in dealing with high dimensional data. Arctangent denoted by the Atan penalty has been used in both estimation and variable selection as an efficient method recently. However, the Atan penalty is very sensitive to outliers in response to variables or heavy-tailed error distribution. While the least absolute deviation is a good method to get robustness in regression estimation. The specific objective of this research is to propose a robust Atan estimator from combining these two ideas at once. Simulation experiments and real data applications show that the p

Training has an effect on employees’ performances. Accordingly, the person who is responsible for employees’ development must figure out the most effective way to train and develop employees. Central Michigan University (CMU) has recognized the importance of providing appropriate training for employees who have a duty in advising students. The reason is that these employees have a significant impact on students’ educational performances. Thus, special attention to this category of employees is needed to improve advising quality. This research attempted to explore the impact of training on academic advising at CMU. Face-to-face interviews and online surveys were used as data collection tools for this study. The study scope c

Objective: The present study aims to assess the stressful life events for patients with substance abuse in Baghdad city.
Methodology: A descriptive study was carried out at (Baghdad teaching hospital and Ibn-Rushed Psychiatric hospital).
Starting from 1
st of December 2012 to 3
rd of July 2013, A non-probability (purposive) sample of 64 patients that
diagnosed with substance abuse, the data were collected through the use of semi-structured interview by
questionnaire, which consists of three parts sociodemographic data, medical information, and Life events scale
consists of 49-items distributed to six domains including, family and social domain, health domain, security, legal and
criminal domain, work and school do

Polyacrylonitrile nanofiber (PANFS), a well-known polymers, has been extensively employed in the manufacturing of carbon nanofibers (CNFS), which have recently gained substantial attention due to their excellent features, such as spinnability, environmental friendliness, and commercial feasibility. Because of their high carbon yield and versatility in tailoring the final CNFS structure, In addition to the simple formation of ladder structures through nitrile polymerization to yield stable products, CNFS and PAN have been the focus of extensive research as potential production precursors. For instance, the development of biomedical and high-performance composites has now become achievable. PAN homopolymer or PAN-based precursor copol

This paper proposes a new structure for a Fractional Order Sliding Mode Controller (FOSMC) to control a Twin Rotor Aerodynamic System (TRAS). The new structure is composed by defining two 3-dimensional sliding mode surfaces for the TRAS model and introducing fractional order derivative integral in the state variables as well as in the control action. The parameters of the controller are determined so as to minimize the Integral of Time multiplied by Absolute Error (ITAE) performance index. Through comparison, this controller outperforms its integer counterpart in many specifications, such as reducing the delay time, rise time, percentage overshoot, settling time, time to reach the sliding surface, and amplitude of chattering in control inpu