Fluctuating rainfall as one of the important cause for desertification in Iraq

Desertification is regarded as one of the most problems over the entire world. There are many reasons lead to this problem. Climatic factors such (rainfall, temperature and evaporation) are some of them. Annual rainfall amount is one of the most important parameters that lead to desertification for this reason it chosen to achieve this research. In this paper rainfall data with the help of Geographic Information System (GIS) to produce maps of Iraqi surface climate. In order to achieve this goal, the available data from a number of climate monitoring stations located on the surface of the country has been were adopted. The annual mean of rainfall for the period from 1990 to 2010 has been used. The Iraqi shape file map was used to overlay the results. The output of the research are presented in GIS maps that demonstrating the variation of rainfall over the study period for the monitoring climate stations

Proceedings of the Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference (SPARC) 2011

These proceedings bring together a selection of papers from the 2011 Salford Postgraduate Annual Research Conference(SPARC). It includes papers from PhD students in the arts and social sciences, business, computing, science and engineering, education, environment, built environment and health sciences. Contributions from Salford researchers are published here alongside papers from students at the Universities of Anglia Ruskin, Birmingham City, Chester,De Montfort, Exeter, Leeds, Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores and Manchester

CA 15-3 is predictive of response and disease recurrence following treatment in locally advanced breast cancer

BACKGROUND: Primary chemotherapy (PC) is used for down-staging locally advanced breast cancer (LABC). CA 15-3 measures the protein product of the MUC1 gene and is the most widely used serum marker in breast cancer. METHODS: We retrospectively investigated the role of CA 15-3 in conjunction with other clinico-pathological variables as a predictor of response and time to disease recurrence following treatment in LABC. Pre and post primary chemotherapy serum concentrations of CA 15-3 together with other variables were reviewed and related to four outcomes following primary chemotherapy (clinical response, pathological response, time to recurrence and time to progression). Persistently elevated CA 15-3 after PC was considered as consecutively high levels above the cut off point during and after PC. RESULTS: 73 patients were included in this study. Patients received PC (AC or AC-T regimen) for locally advanced breast cancer. 54 patients underwent surgery. The median follow up was 790 days. Patients with high concentrations of CA 15-3 before PC treatment had a poor clinical (p = 0.013) and pathological (p = 0.044) response. Together with Her-2/neu expression (p = 0.009) and tumour lympho-vascular space invasion (LVI) (p = 0.001), a persistently elevated CA 15-3 post PC (p = 0.007) was an independent predictive factor of recurrence following treatment in LABC. CONCLUSION: Elevated CA 15-3 level is predictive of a poor response to chemotherapy. In addition, persistently elevated CA 15-3 levels post chemotherapy in conjunction with lympho-vascular invasion and HER2 status predict a reduced disease free survival following treatment in locally advanced breast cancer

Irregularity-based image regions saliency identification and evaluation

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The publisher's final version of record can be found by following the DOI.Saliency or Salient regions extraction form images is still a challenging field since it needs some understanding for the image and the nature of the image. The technique that is suitable in some application is not necessarily useful in other application, thus, saliency enhancement is application oriented. In this paper, a new technique of extracting the salient regions from an image is proposed which utilizes the local features of the surrounding region of the pixels. The level of saliency is then decided based on the global comparison of the saliency-enhanced image. To make the process fully automatic a new Fuzzy-Based thresholding technique has been proposed also. The paper contains a survey of the state-of-the-art methods of saliency evaluation and a new saliency evaluation technique was proposed

Evaluation of the sensitivity of Al-Husseiniya soils in Karbala to erosion using Landsat sensors

This study has been carried out to evaluate the erosion environmental sensitivity of Husseiniya soils in Karbala governorate in Iraq for the years 92–2022. The method of predictive models and remote sensing data was adopted for soil characteristics related to erosion due to the lack of data related to soil surveys.In this study, Landsat sensors was used to produce these models, where the soil was modelled for the year 2022, and on that basis predictive models and a layer derived for the rest of study years. It was found that erosion increased by 5 % and achieved a significant difference due to salinity increase and organic material decrease, as they are the two factors affecting the increase of soil environmental sensitivity to erosion.When conducting spatial analysis study, a significant spatial effect of calcium carbonate was observed in association with salinity and organic material in obtaining the best stable predictive models because calcium carbonate is the main part controlling the efficiency of soil chemical reactions and physical structures, and that neutralizing its harmful effect in soil associated with increasing soil of organic material.The importance of this work is to inform the beneficiaries of researchers and farmers of soil environmental balance main obstacles within the area of field activity, which is provided by geomatics software due to its digital environment that allows converting soil data into maps and statistical profiles through spatial prediction equations application, which prepares to decision-makers a suitable ground to adopt the method that achieves a solid base to implement the right decision

Fabrication of a highly flexible low-cost H2 gas sensor using ZnO nanorods grown on an ultra-thin nylon substrate

A “highly flexible low-cost” H2 gas sensor was fabricated via inclined and vertically well-aligned ZnO nanorods on a “cheap, thin (15 µm), and highly flexible” nylon substrate using the hydrothermal method. Morphological, crystallinity, and optical properties of the prepared ZnO nanorods were studied by field emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, X-ray diffraction, and photoluminescence measurements. Results revealed the formation of aligned hexagonal-like nanorods with high aspect ratio and density. The results confirmed the formation of würtzite ZnO phase with a preferred orientation along the (002) direction with high crystallinity, excellent quality, and few defects. The sensitivity and response time behaviors of the ZnO-based gas sensor to hydrogen gas at different operation temperatures and in various hydrogen concentrations were investigated. Under 500 ppm of H2 exposure at different temperatures from room temperature to 180 °C, the sensitivity increased from 109 to 264 %. When the exposed H2 gas increased from 750 to 2000 ppm at a fixed temperature of 75 °C, the sensitivity also sharply increased from 246 to 578 %. Moreover, both the response and recovery time of the device during both tests were enhanced. The hydrogen gas sensing mechanisms of ZnO nanorods in low and high operation temperatures were discussed