Effect of Information and Communication Technology Investment on the Profitability of the Jordanian Commercial Banks

The objective of this research paper is to evaluate the effect of investment in information and communication technologies on the profitability and performance of the Jordanian commercial banks, whether it helps to improve sales or it helps to reduce the overall operating expenses. To arrive at this objective, the researchers used Cobb-Douglas production function as a proxy to measure these effects. The researchers used two measures of profit: ROA and ROE as dependent variables for this purpose, depending on the annual reports of the sample Jordanian commercial banks as a source for the raw data that was used in the analysis for the period between 2006 to 2013. SPSS  was used as a statistical tool for the arrangement of data and mutable regression  was used as a statistical tool for the analysis. From the analysis of the study, the following conclusion was reached: there is a positive effect of investment in information and technologies on the profitability and performance of the sample Jordanian commercial banks used in this research. Keywords: Information and communication technology, Investment, Profitability, Commercial banks, Jordan.

CURVATURE DUCTILITYOF REINFORCED CONCRETE BEAM SECTIONS STIFFENED WITH STEEL PLATES

This paper presents theoretical parametric study of the curvature ductility capacity for reinforced concrete beam sections stiffened with steel plates. The study considers the behavior of concrete and reinforcing steel under different strain rates. A computer program has been written to compute the curvature ductility taking into account the spalling in concrete cover. Strain rate sensitive constitutive models of steel and concrete were used for predicting the moment-curvature relationship of reinforced concrete beams at different rate of straining. The study parameters are the yield strength of main reinforcement, yield strength of transverse reinforcement, compressive strength of concrete, spacing of stirrups and steel plate thickness. The results indicated that higher strain rates improve both the curvature ductility and the moment capacity of reinforced concrete beam sections. Moreover the section curvature ductility increases as the thickness of the stiffening plates decreases

Facile synthesis of Schiff and Mannich bases of isatin derivatives

We report herein on the synthesis of some isatin Schiff’s bases (1–11), which were prepared from the reaction of isatin and some aromatic amines. These in turn were converted to the corresponding Mannich bases (12-23) by reaction with a number of secondary amines and formaldehyde, taking advantage of the active –NH group in the isatin. The structures of these compounds were elucidated using standard spectroscopic and analytical methods

Determining the Natural Radioactivity Level of Soil Samples from Halabja City

The samples of soil were collected from 7 locations in Halabja city, in February 2019. The natural radioactivity of the soil samples has been studied using High Pure Germanium (HPGe) detection system. The activity concentration (As) of the natural series; 238U, 232Th and 40K was determined for the samples. The values of As were ranged (45.641 ± 3.252 - 92.862 ± 4.295), (61.287±2.996 - 135.773 ± 18.366) and (227.9 ± 4.874 - 413.0±7.060) Bq kg−1, respectively. The radium equivalent activity (????(????????)) was determined with range (52.006 – 130.518) Bq kg-1. The total absorbed dose rate (????) calculated from the activity concentration of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K in the studied area ranges from 25.53 nGy h-1 to 58.921 nGy h-1. The calculated values of total annual effective dose  (????????????????) for the soil samples of the study area ranged from 0.156 to 0.361. Since these values are less than unity, the EC report (European Commission, radiation protection report) concludes that the soil from these areas is healthy and poses no substantial radiological risk to the population

Lithofacies Architecture of the Gercus Formation in Jabal Haibat Sultan, NE Iraq; New Concept of Lithostratigraphy and Depositional Environmental

Lithostratigraphic analysis of the Gercus Formation reveals four associations based on lithofacies types, petrography and sedimentary structures. The identified lithotypes are shale/claystone, sandstone, carbonate, conglomerate and debrite. Lithofacies association reveals four types arranged from bottom to top; FA1 proximal turbidite (sand dominated), FA2 distal turbidite (clay dominated), FA3 slop-apron turbidite (sand dominated) and FA4 distal deep turbidite (clay dominated). Lithofacies and associated sedimentary structures suggest sedimentation in marine turbidite regime followed the deep marine turbidites of Tanjero and Kolosh Formations in Tethyian foreland basin. The Middle-Late Eocene Gercus Flysch sediments composed of predominant litharenitic sandstones and interbedded mudstones, of turbiditic origin and mostly derived from a NE Arabian Plate margins. The sediments are well exposed in the NE side of Haibat Sultan Mountain, and provide excellent examples of fan sands associated with turbidites and related facies. The examined section indicates that the sandstones were deposited in larger channel complexes, which fed a mud-dominated slope. The more proximal facies have proportion of pebble conglomerates, shale-clast conglomerates and thick-bedded structureless pebbly sandstones, deposited by high-density turbidity currents, debris flows and slump. Other facies, either more distal or with a more uniform sand-rich are dominated by thick-bedded and amalgamated structureless sandstones. The massive sands are thought to originate from the gradual aggradations of sediment beneath or near-steady flows. In this paper, new sedimentological and lithofacies evidences prove for the first time that the Gercus Formation was deposited in gravity-flow regime in marine environment. The identified sedimentary structures display alternative graded and fining upward cycles, load and flute casts, submarine channels, sand and clay balls and pillow structures, convolute and slump beddings, of turbidity origin, which is supported by index glauconite mineral in some sandstone horizons. Keywords: Turbidites, Sedimentary structures, Gravity flow, Flysch, Gercus, Eocene, NE Iraq

Error concealment innovator based on the multi-directional interpolation by using the similarity segmentation

In this paper, an error concealment algorithm based on the multi-directional interpolation (MDI) was proposed. The algorithm has the capability to recover the damaged blocs, whether located in smooth or non-smooth areas. In the case of smooth regions, the missing coefficients were estimated by interpolating these coefficients with undamaged adjacent pixels. While, in the non-smooth areas (for example edge components), these blocks were portioned to at least four quarters, in the intention to exploit all border pixels. In the meantime, pixels of the border left and right were estimated with horizontal interpolation, pixels of the border top, and bottom were estimated with vertical interpolation, Whereas the remaining pixels of each quarter were simultaneously guessed with vertical and horizontal interpolation. Finally, another algorithm to convert pixels to feet proposed. The motivation behind the current implementation and the problem that we aim to solve lies on how to convert the size of the base and height of triangles from pixels-to-feet. In the intention to calculate the areas of these triangles, for the purpose of compensation. The experimental results showed that the number of pixels occurred and the error was relatively low

Message Coding and Compression with Artificial Neural Networks

The need to overcome data preprocessing inherent in much of the classical data coding techniques commonly available led to the search for a free, easy-to-use, but flexible and powerful method. Artificial Neural networks have been attracting more and more researchers since the past decades. The distinct properties, such as learning ability,nonlinearity, fault tolerance, generalization etc., make it suitable for information protection, such as data encryption, data authentication, data detection, etc. In this paper a simple and low-cost coding method based on neural networks is proposed to be used to patterns compression. The goal of the developers is to build a tool able to store and send a coded and compressed message. The formed two-dimensional patterns are coded and compressed using the multilayer neural network with Back-propagation training algorithm. Hidden layer outputs of a trained network are sent as two-dimensional data,which represents the encoded vectors. To reconstruct the original patterns, this requires the output weights matrix and the output nodes functions which are unknown and not available in the encoded sent vectors. A compression rate of about 6:1 has been achieved