Water Quality Assessment of Some Well Water in Erbil City by Quality Index, Kurdistan Region-Iraq

The present work is aimed at assessing the water quality index (WQI) for the six well in Erbil city. This has been determined by collecting groundwater samples and subjecting the samples to a comprehensive physicochemical analysis. For calculating the WQI, the following 8 parameters have been considered: EC, TDS, pH, Alkalinity, Hardness, NO3, Ca+2, Mg+2. The WQI for these samples ranges from 24.825 in Rizgari well No. 1 to 84.048 in Azadi well No. 8. The results indicated that water quality of wells (Azadi 8, Ankawa 9, Ronaky 1 and Badawa 13) remains Good and Tayrawa well No. 1 remains excellent in the years 2004, 2005, and 2012. But well of Rizgari No. 1 changed from good in year 2004 and to excellent in 2012

A renormalisation approach to excitable reaction-diffusion waves in fractal media

Of fundamental importance to wave propagation in a wide range of physical phenomena is the structural geometry of the supporting medium. Recently, there have been several investigations on wave propagation in fractal media. We present here a renormalization approach to the study of reaction-diffusion (RD) wave propagation on finitely ramified fractal structures. In particular we will study a Rinzel-Keller (RK) type model, supporting travelling waves on a Sierpinski gasket (SG), lattice

The unacknowledged legacy

This paper presents a critical discussion of the treatment of mimetic art, and particularly poetry and the theatre, in the work of the Athenian philosopher Plato (427-347 BC). It centres on Plato's discussion of the corrupting powers of the arts in the Republic, and the implications that his fierce attack on poetry and theatre have for his construction of the ideal polity. The legacy of Platonic ideas in later elaborations of the corrupting power of the arts is discussed. Furthermore, the paper investigates the relationship between current debates on cultural policy and the Platonic idea that the transformative powers of the arts ought to be harnessed by the state to promote a just society. The conclusion thus reached is that “instrumental cultural policy”, rather then being a modern invention, was in fact first theorized precisely in Plato's Republic

Shape description and matching using integral invariants on eccentricity transformed images

Matching occluded and noisy shapes is a problem frequently encountered in medical image analysis and more generally in computer vision. To keep track of changes inside the breast, for example, it is important for a computer aided detection system to establish correspondences between regions of interest. Shape transformations, computed both with integral invariants (II) and with geodesic distance, yield signatures that are invariant to isometric deformations, such as bending and articulations. Integral invariants describe the boundaries of planar shapes. However, they provide no information about where a particular feature lies on the boundary with regard to the overall shape structure. Conversely, eccentricity transforms (Ecc) can match shapes by signatures of geodesic distance histograms based on information from inside the shape; but they ignore the boundary information. We describe a method that combines the boundary signature of a shape obtained from II and structural information from the Ecc to yield results that improve on them separately

The mammalian gene function resource: The International Knockout Mouse Consortium

In 2007, the International Knockout Mouse Consortium (IKMC) made the ambitious promise to generate mutations in virtually every protein-coding gene of the mouse genome in a concerted worldwide action. Now, 5 years later, the IKMC members have developed highthroughput gene trapping and, in particular, gene-targeting pipelines and generated more than 17,400 mutant murine embryonic stem (ES) cell clones and more than 1,700 mutant mouse strains, most of them conditional. A common IKMC web portal (www.knockoutmouse.org) has been established, allowing easy access to this unparalleled biological resource. The IKMC materials considerably enhance functional gene annotation of the mammalian genome and will have a major impact on future biomedical research

A Study On Communication Strategies Used By Students At Sma Muhammadiyah Program Khusus Kartasura

This research was qualitative research with a case study design on communication strategies used by male and female students in SMA Muhammadiyah Program Khusus Kartasura. The objectives of this research were, 1) to describe the types of communication strategies used by students and 2) to identify the gender differences in communication strategies used by students. This study involved seven male and seven female of tenth and eleventh grade students. In this study, the researcher used observations, interviews and documentations as the data source. The data analyzed using Celce-Murcia, et al (1995) taxonomy. The finding revealed that message replacement sub-types of avoidance or reduction strategies were frequently used compared to other types of strategies, male students employed eight strategies and female students employed six strategies. Both of them employed message replacement, approximation, literal translation, code switching and use of all-purpose words. For message abandonment and filler, hesitation devices and gambits were only employed by male students. While self and other repetitions were only employed by female students

Effect of sintering temperature on the physical properties of Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 prepared by solid-state reaction

Barium Strontium Titanate (BST) ceramic materials are widely used in electronic devices due to their stable operation at high temperatures, high tunability, low tangent loss, low DC leakage, and alterable curie temperatures. While pure BST materials are usually produced at high sintering temperatures (1250 °C), there are limited studies on the temperature and duration of the sintering process to produce pure BST, synthesised from micro or even nano-sized raw materials. This study aims to determine the effective sintering temperature for producing pure BST material using a mixture of raw materials with a mean particle size of 0.4 μm after milled for 58 hours. The BaCO3, SrCO3, and TiO2 materials as raw materials for Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 synthesis were milled for 58 hours to produce a homogeneous mixture with a mean particle size of 0.4 μm. Sintering was carried out in a temperature range of 500-1100 °C for 1 hour. This study investigates the impact of sintering temperature on the physical properties and the purity of Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 powder using the x-ray diffraction method. The results showed that the Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 phase was formed at a sintering temperature of 700 °C. Pure BST material was formed at the sintering temperature of 1000 °C with a crystallite size of 41 nm. Whereas at a higher sintering temperature (1100 °C), the pure BST material formed produced a larger crystallite, sized at 43 nm with cubic structure. The synthesis temperature and duration recorded in this research are lower than recorded in the BST material preparation using the solid-state method. The results of this study indicate that the sintering temperature greatly affects the purity, crystal system and crystallite size of the Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 material produced. The sintering temperature of 1100 °C produces Ba0.6Sr0.4TiO3 material with the best physical properties because it has a cubic-shaped crystal system and the largest crystal size

Intersectional forces of urban inequality and the global HIV pandemic: a retrospective analysis

To determine how the intersection of increased urban growth and poverty has impacted HIV incidence and prevalence, given growing HIV inequalities globally. Retrospective analysis using combined data from five publicly available, population-level datasets to determine city- and within-urban countrywide estimates of 95-95-95 treatment targets, prevalence and incidence rates from 2015 to 2019. For city-level estimates, we analysed combined data from: Fast-Track City (FTC), SINAN from Brazil and UNAIDS Naomi-Spectrum. Countrywide estimates of HIV prevalence in the urban slum versus non-slum since 2012 were compiled from Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment (PHIA) surveys in 12 countries and Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) in 28 countries. HIV prevalence is generally higher among the urban slum, compared to their non-slum counterparts, thus resulting in national HIV estimates masking nuances in HIV inequalities between the urban slum and non-slum. Specifically, national and city-level HIV estimates mask inequalities within and between cities, with secondary cities often having higher HIV prevalence and incidence rates than capital cities and large urban areas. The urban divide between slum and non-slum populations is a contributor to HIV inequality, often with poorer outcomes in smaller cities than their larger counterparts. Interventions tailored to cities, and particularly those considering local nuances in subpopulations (eg, different genders, ages, roles), are necessary to reduce HIV inequality. Focused HIV programming accounting for structural drivers of inequalities between urban slum and non-slum populations such as inequalities in wealth, education, employment and housing are crucial to closing gaps driving HIV inequalities globally

Leptospirosis during Dengue Outbreak, Bangladesh

We collected acute-phase serum samples from febrile patients at 2 major hospitals in Dhaka, Bangladesh, during an outbreak of dengue fever in 2001. A total of 18% of dengue-negative patients tested positive for leptospirosis. The case-fatality rate among leptospirosis patients (5%) was higher than among dengue fever patients (1.2%)

Analysis of question text properties for equality monitoring.

INTRODUCTION: Ongoing monitoring of cohort demographic variation is an essential part of quality assurance in medical education assessments, yet the methods employed to explore possible underlying causes of demographic variation in performance are limited. Focussing on properties of the vignette text in single-best-answer multiple-choice questions (MCQs), we explore here the viability of conducting analyses of text properties and their relationship to candidate performance. We suggest that such analyses could become routine parts of assessment evaluation and provide an additional, equality-based measure of an assessment's quality and fairness. METHODS: We describe how a corpus of vignettes can be compiled, followed by examples of using Microsoft Word's native readability statistics calculator and the koRpus text analysis package for the R statistical analysis environment for estimating the following properties of the question text: Flesch Reading Ease (FRE), Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (Grade), word count, sentence count, and average words per sentence (WpS). We then provide examples of how these properties can be combined with equality and diversity variables, and the process automated to provide ongoing monitoring. CONCLUSIONS: Given the monitoring of demographic differences in assessment for assurance of equality, the ability to easily include textual analysis of question vignettes provides a useful tool for exploring possible causes of demographic variations in performance where they occur. It also provides another means of evaluating assessment quality and fairness with respect to demographic characteristics. Microsoft Word provides data comparable to the specialized koRpus package, suggesting routine use of word processing software for writing items and assessing their properties is viable with minimal burden, but that automation for ongoing monitoring also provides an additional means of standardizing MCQ assessment items, and eliminating or controlling textual variables as a possible contributor to differential attainment between subgroups