Fiber reinforced polymer bar investigation: Long-term in-situ durability and bond strength assessment in conventional and sustainable concrete

Corrosion of steel reinforcement and carbon dioxide emissions are two major global problems. Different methods, techniques, and materials have been implemented to mitigate these problems. Glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) bar presents itself as a solid alternative to replace conventional steel reinforcement owing to its fantastic features in resisting corrosion. Its demand is progressively increasing. Cement-based concrete, on the other hand, is not eco-friendly due to the excessive amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions yielded from its cement production. One of the alternatives used to mitigate the use of cement in concrete is fly ash. Fly ash is considered a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) and has been only implemented partially to replace cement as a binding material in concrete, however its application has been limited to only limited doses (lower than 30%). In this study, durability and bond-slip investigations were carried out. The durability study was done on GFRP bars extracted from eleven bridges across the United States after being in service from 12 to 20 years. Several tests were conducted on the bar and the surrounding concrete to make the assessment. The tests results showed that there were slight sings for environmental attack but did not show any obvious signs for microstructural deteriorations. In addition, a bond-slip investigation was carried out to evaluate the bond performance of GFRP bars embedded in fly ash-based sustainable concrete. A high-volume fly ash (HVFA) concrete was implemented; 50% and 70% cement replaced with fly ash were used. The results showed that GFRP bars had less bond strength than that resulted from mild steel bars --Abstract, page iv

Tectonic In Architecture

Architectural development along its history reflects advancement of expression ability of ideas , elements and structural systems . This explain how a specific structural system gains specific aesthetic values which obtained by cumulative experts advice about construction and architecture , also explain the convertibility of constructional thought pure structural system into structural system tectonic . The research problem was the lake of knowledge about complex degree of tectonic consept and its correlation with the structural system and construction . From this point, the comprehensive understanding of a tectonic concept depends on understanding the essential nature of structural system and construction as long as with functional space (closed and semi - closed) and gets through with functional structure and aesthetical needs without omitting the ethical role in composing architectural and structural coherence which is the main research aim . The research methodology consist of three stages ; First, construct operational definition of tectonic concept. Second, investigate about “ Tectonics ” as “ Tectonic construction ” throughout two levels ; first descriptive concern with corporeal , physical , formal characteristics and the second analytical /descriptive concern with incorporeal, aesthetical, ethical, in the last level it was analyzed many projects depending on main concepts deduct from previous knowledge . The final stage are determines the main research conclusions . Key words : tectonic, form, force, construction, space, aesthetical, ethical

Spatial Analysis of the Results of Parliamentary Elections in Babylon Governorate in 2018

 . يهتم البحث ببيان جغرافية الدعم التصويتي للأحزاب والكتل الفائزة في انتخابات 12\أيار\2018 البرلمانية؛ وذلك من خلال اجراء تحليل جغرافي لنتائج الانتخابات بالاعتماد على بيانات الشريط الانتخابي الصادر عن المفوضية العليا المستقلة للانتخابات\مكتب بابل، وتكون البحث من مقدمة وثلاثة فصول: تضمن الفصل الاول الاطار النظري ومفاهيم الدراسة، بينما تضمن الفصل الثاني التحليل الجغرافي السياسي لنتائج الانتخابات البرلمانية في محافظة بابل لعام 2018، في حين تضمن الفصل الثالث مجموعة من الاستنتاجات والمقترحات.The research is concerned with the geographical indication of the voting support of the winning parties and blocs in the parliamentary elections of 12\5\ 2018, through making a geographical analysis of the election results by depending on the electoral tape data issued by official resource, the research consists of an introduction and three chapters: The first theoretical framework and concepts of the study, while the second chapter included the geopolitical analysis of the results of parliamentary elections in the province of Babylon in 2018, while the third chapter contained a set of conclusions and suggestion

The transformation strategy and its role in forming the structure of future architecture

Nature's strategies and solutions represent a significant and rich source to benefit from in creating an architectural composition that corresponds to its structure, which leads to the emergence of unexpected, vibrant, and constantly changing architectural forms due to the continuous development and progress in technology and science. Transformation is one of the strategies of nature that can be used to form the structure of future architecture, characterized by diversity and continuous formal change. Therefore, this strategy must be studied to create an adaptive architectural structure. The research aims to develop a theoretical framework that explains the role of transformation strategy in forming the structure of future architecture. The study thus reviews the basic concepts of transformation and future architecture. Then it presents the mechanisms to achieve transformation in architecture. Indicators of the conceptual framework of the transformation strategy are extracted from the knowledge provided about it. The conceptual framework represents a tool for enhancing the transformation strategy taken from nature to create innovative future architectural structures that look like living organisms, where they can perform adaptation processes and formal diversity

Adaptive Indexing of Documents Using Genetic Algorithms and Relevance Feedback

مقدمة: في هذه الورقة، تم البحث في مشكلة استرجاع الوثائق الصحيحة التي تحقق رغبات المستخدم. الهدف الرئيسي في أنظمة استرجاع المعلومات هو استرداد جميع الوثائق ذات الصلة فقط. طرق العمل: تم استخدام الخوارزمية الجينية لتحقيق هذا الهدف. أوصاف المستندات تم تكييفها وتغييرها باستخدام الخوارزمية الجينية، اعتمادًا على الأحكام التي اطلقها المستخدم (والتي تم جمعها والاحتفاظ بها) حول اهمية المستندات بالنسبة له. الخوارزمية الجينية هي أداة قوية تعتمد على مبادئ الداروينية وتقنيات التطور للبحث في فضاءات البحث المعقدة. يسهل استخدام الخوارزمية الجينية تكييف فهارس المستندات. تم تنفيذ ثلاثة طرق في الانتخاب: نمذجة عجلة الروليت ، ونمذجة عجلة الروليت مع النخبة والنمذجة الشاملة التصادفية. يتم حساب دالة الصلاحية باستخدام معامل Jaccard الذي يقيس التقارب بين الاستعلام وفهرس المستند. الاستنتاجات: توجد بين الكلمات المفتاحية المستخدمة لوصف محتوى الوثائق اعتماديات إحصائية. من الصعب استيعاب هذه الاعتماديات في نظام الاسترجاع. يمكن للخوارزمية الجينية أن تأخذ في الاعتبار هذه الاعتماديات أثناء عملها. وفقًا لنظرية المخطط وفرضية حجر البناء [10] ، يتم نشر المخططات الأكثر صلاحية من جيل إلى جيل ، حيث يتم أخذ عينات منها وإعادة تجميعها وتحويلها وإعادة تشكيلها لتشكيل سلاسل ذات صلاحية أعلى. هناك جانب آخر يمكن أن تقدمه الخوارزمية الجينية ، وهو الاعتماد على التغذية الراجعة المقدمة من مستخدمي نظام الاسترجاع لتكييف أوصاف المستندات، وإنتاج مجموعة جديدة من الأوصاف الأقرب إلى حاجات المستخدمين. تم استخدام ثلاثة انواع من الانتخاب المتناسب مع الصلاحية ، وهي نمذجة عجلة الروليت ، ونمذجة عجلة الروليت ذات النخبة ، والنمذجة الشاملة التصادفية. أظهرت النتائج تفوق النوع الثالث على الأول والثاني.Background: In this paper, the problem of retrieving the correct documents that satisfy the user's concerns is investigated. The main aim in information retrieval systems is to retrieve all and only relevant documents. Materials and Methods: The genetic algorithm is utilized to adapt and change the documents indexes, depending on relevance judgments collected from users. Genetic algorithm is a powerful tool that depends on the Darwinian principles and evolution techniques to search complex spaces. The use of genetic algorithm facilitates the adaptation of documents indexes. Sampling operation is performed using roulette wheel, roulette wheel with elitism and stochastic universal sampling. The fitness function is computed using Jaccard's coefficient that measure the closeness between query and document index. Results: The results show that the new descriptions are more efficient and closer to the population of users that use the information retrieval system. In addition, the stochastic universal sampling gave the best results. Conclusion: The keywords used to describe the content of documents have statistical dependencies among them. It is difficult to accommodate these dependencies in retrieval system. Genetic algorithm can consider these dependencies during its action. According to schema theorem and building block hypothesis [10], the fittest schemata are propagated from generation to generation, where they are sampled, recombined, mutated and resampled to form strings of potentially higher worth. Another aspect genetic algorithm can offer, is the reliance on the feedback provided by users of the retrieval system to adapt documents descriptions and selections variations were experimented with roulette sampling, with elitism, and with produce new set of descriptions closer to the population of users' needs. Three fitness proportionate selection variations are used, roulette wheel sampling, roulette wheel with elitism and  stochastic universal sampling. The results have indicated the superiority of the third over the first two.&nbsp

Tamper detection of qur'anic text watermarking scheme based on vowel letters with Kashida using exclusive-or and queueing technique

The most sensitive Arabic text available online is the digital Holy Qur’an. This sacred Islamic religious book is recited by all Muslims worldwide including the non-Arabs as part of their worship needs. It should be protected from any kind of tampering to keep its invaluable meaning intact. Different characteristics of the Arabic letters like the vowels ( أ . و . ي ), Kashida (extended letters), and other symbols in the Holy Qur’an must be secured from alterations. The cover text of the al-Qur’an and its watermarked text are different due to the low values of the Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Embedding Ratio (ER), and Normalized Cross-Correlation (NCC), thus the location for tamper detection gets low accuracy. Watermarking technique with enhanced attributes must therefore be designed for the Qur’an text using Arabic vowel letters with Kashida. Most of the existing detection methods that tried to achieve accurate results related to the tampered Qur’an text often show various limitations like diacritics, alif mad surah, double space, separate shapes of Arabic letters, and Kashida. The gap addressed by this research is to improve the security of Arabic text in the Holy Qur’an by using vowel letters with Kashida. The purpose of this research is to enhance Quran text watermarking scheme based on exclusive-or and reversing with queueing techniques. The methodology consists of four phases. The first phase is pre-processing followed by the embedding process phase to hide the data after the vowel letters wherein if the secret bit is ‘1’, insert the Kashida but do not insert it if the bit is ‘0’. The third phase is extraction process and the last phase is to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme by using PSNR (for the imperceptibility), ER (for the capacity), and NCC (for the security of the watermarking). The experimental results revealed the improvement of the NCC by 1.77 %, PSNR by 9.6 %, and ER by 8.6 % compared to available current schemes. Hence, it can be concluded that the proposed scheme has the ability to detect the location of tampering accurately for attacks of insertion, deletion, and reordering

Multi-Scale Investigation of Low Salinity Water Flooding for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Injecting low salinity water in sandstone reservoirs is the most practical example of smart water technology. However, the feasibility of low salinity flooding for enhanced oil recovery is controversial for carbonates due to the poor understanding of the displacement mechanisms, which should be potentially responsible for low salinity effect. This project presents a novel concept to study the complicated interactions in solid/brine/crude oil systems at multiple scales with more insight on the physicochemical mechanisms affecting the wettability trend and hence, the potential of low salinity flooding. Different microscopic and macroscopic apparatuses were used including atomic force microscopy (AFM), quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), microfluidic system, goniometer, and core flooding setup. Studying the rock/brine/oil interactions at a macroscopic-scale shows that the salinity effect is more salient at the rock/liquid interface than the liquid/liquid interface, and the response to the brine composition is dominated by the chemical composition of crude oil with respect to its content of polar organic components, as well as the rock mineralogy. These results have been corroborated by a series of macroscopic core flooding experiments conducted at in-situ reservoir conditions. Molecular level QCM study also shows that increasing the content of negative polar components in crude oil leads to less desorption from calcite surface compared to the silica surface upon exposure to low saline solutions, verifying the macroscopic core flooding findings. Two times diluted seawater yielded the highest desorption efficiency as a result of a reduction in the adhesion forces, as detected by AFM study. Investigating the potential of enhancing oil recovery by low salinity flooding at the pore-scale, however, did not show any positive effect on the microscopic sweeping efficiency for the oil-wet system compared to the water-wet system. No change in the in-situ wettability was observed during a sequential low salinity injection in a hydrophobic microstructure, and the pore surfaces stay within a strongly oil-wet condition. The work described in this thesis revealed that there is a critical brine concentration for EOR in carbonates that should be considered, after which no measurable effect is detected. Low salinity flooding is an inappropriate technique for enhanced oil recovery for the strongly oil-wet formations saturated with heavy-polar crude oils. In addition, while the expansion of the electric double layer at lower salt is likely to be responsible for reduced oil adhesion on carbonates, it is modulated by surface ions binding. Therefore, a combination of these two mechanisms, as well as the salting-out phenomenon has a dominating effect on low salinity flooding performance. The pore-flow of brine in the water-wet system is different from that of a completely oil-wet system, and thereby the potential and associated mechanisms of low salinity flooding are expected to be different

The Effects of Extracted Peptide from Skin of Iraqi Frog (Rana ridibunda) on Human Leukemic Lymphocytes

        The purified frog skin peptides were tested on leukemic patients lymphocytes, which revealed effects of cytotoxicity. Four frogs (Rana ridibunda) were stimulated by single intra-peritoneal injection of norepinephrine-HCl . Five different peptides;1(18) A, 2(19) L, 3(20) I,4(21) E and 5(22) Y were isolated and quantified. The peptide 3(20)I had 5.87% of hemolysis, while healthy human lymphocytes cytotoxic activity was for 2(19)L with inhibition( -10.4%).All peptides were subjected to polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The results revealed peptides 1(18)A, 2(19)L, 3(20)I which appeared as low as 10 KDa  marker. Theoretically, the whole polypeptide had a molecular weight 7488.61 Dalton and contained on 62.405 amino acid (a.a). The peptide 4(21)E had a highest inhibitory effect(46%) on tumor cell line L20B. Furthermore , peptides effects on acute  and  chronic  myeloid  lymphocytic  leukemia  patients cell cultures  revealed  peptides selectivity  in  their  action according  to  their net charge  and functional  group as  reactant  proton  donor by the  evidence  of peptide 5(22)Y, 16.22 Dalton  so  it  was  either N—terminus (--NH2) or  C—terminus (--OH)  that  led  to  cross  cell  membrane then acted as antigen mediated and activated  cells in a high significant  value (-142.37± 47.69)for acute myeloid  lymphocytic leukemia .Both  of peptides  3(20) I  and  2(19) L were revealed  a  highly significant  differences  within  Chr.40  and Chr. 22 of  inhibition  effects  by testing  volumes 15 µl and 10 µl . Those inhibition  effects  were due to  peptides  reaction  with  mitochondrial  membrane  which  led  to apoptosis . Conclusion; Frog skin peptides have a therapeutically worth for malignant diseases. Also some of peptides were activated lymphocytes may to cure immunodeficiency