Water harvesting in Erbil Governorate, Kurdistan region, Iraq : detection of suitable sites using geographic information system and remote sensing

The drought effects on Iraq, and specifically on the Kurdistan region, is on the rise due to the climate change. Management of the water resources has become necessary to solve this problem. The aim of this study is to identify suitable zones for rainwater harvesting in Erbil governorate, Iraqi Kurdistan Region, by using Geographic Information System (GIS) and Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE) as a tool for decision support. Multi criteria evaluation is carried out in Geographic Information System to help the decision makers in determining suitable zones for rainwater harvesting. The criteria which were taken into account for multi criteria evaluation are; soil texture, slope, rainfall data (2000-2011), land use/cover and drainage network. The soil conservation service model was used to estimate the runoff depth. Land use/cover was extracted from LANDSAT satellite imagery (2006) by using remote sensing technique (Idrisi software). An analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method was used to estimate the weight for each criterion. The weighted linear combination method was used to incorporate the criteria weight in the multi criteria evaluation operation. The multi criteria evaluation is supporting determination of suitable areas for rainwater harvesting, and suitable zones to construct small and medium dam sites. The total suitable area for water harvesting is 36% of the study area, where 14% represents moderate suitability while 33% indicate very low suitability. Macro catchment is significant in the selection of suitable areas for rainwater harvesting. A contour line map and the drainage network, represented as a Triangulare Irregular Network (TIN), were used to suggest six sites for small and intermediate dams. The total water capacity of these dams is about 165 million cubic meters.Popular science: Find a suitable area for rainwater harvesting Rainwater harvesting is a technique to capture and store rainfall where it falls. The technique of water harvesting can be used for different purposes, e.g providing irrigation water, drinking water, increase groundwater recharge, and reduce flood risk. The application of rainwater harvesting is suitable in arid and semi-arid areas, where the amount of the water (rainwater as well as available water in strems, wells etc.) changes from year to year. Erbil governorate in Iraqi Kurdistan Region needs to find suitable zones for rainwater harvesting to be used for different purposes, mainly because of irregular rainfall and drought. Geographic Information System have suitable tools to help the decision makers in identifying suitable areas for water harvesting. There are different factors that are used to determine suitable areas, including rainfall data, slope map, soil information, drainage map and land cover/use map. Each factor has a certain importance/weight, which depends on the importance of this factor in determining suitable zones for rainwater harvesting. In this study a multi-criteria evaluation method was used to estimate the weight of each factor, and to combine these factors in order to find suitable areas for water harvesting. The result shows that the total suitable area for water harvesting is 36% of the whole study area, mainly located in the northern parts of Erbil governorate. This means that it will be relatively easy to select suitable sites for water reservoirs, in this study exemplified by small and medium dams, in this part of the study area

Physical Layer Security using Time-Reversal Pre-Coding based OFDM-DCSK Communication System with Artificial Noise Injection

In this paper, Time-Reversal (TR) pre-coding with Artificial Noise (AN) injection is proposed to enhance the physical layer security (PLS) performance in orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing-Differential Chaos Shift Keying (OFDM-DCSK) system, which is named the TRAN-OFDM-DCSK system. This approach is provided to achieve high data rates, high PL data security, and high reliability performance. The AN signal does not spoil the transmitted data to the genuine receiver, but it reduces the ungenuine detection performance. This system ensures the secrecy of communication to the genuine receiver when the sender knows the Channel State Information (CSI) of the genuine communication link. Still, the information about the instantaneous CSI of a possible eavesdropper does not know the transmitter. The performance of the proposed TRAN-OFDM-DCSK system is investigated and tested under a Flat Rayleigh Fading Channel (FRFC). An approach is provided for calculating the performance of Bit Error Rate (BER), and the expression of BER analytical is derived and compared with the simulation version. Furthermore, the ergodic Secrecy Rate (SR) is derived and analyzed at the genuine and ungenuine receivers over the FRFC. Our result shows the best performance for the genuine receiver compared with ungenuine receiver regarding secrecy performance for BER and SR

Miscibility improvement of LDPE/PVA blends by using silane-coupling agent

 خلط اثنين من البوليمرات عادة ما ينتج خليط بوليمري غير ممتزج، يتميز بالخشونة، سهولة تغير الشكل وضعف الترابط بين الطورين. إضافة الى كبر حجم الطور المشتت كبير وضعيف الارتباط بالطور الاخر. لذا فان الامتزاجية للبوليمرات يجب ان يتم تحسينها باستخدام مضافات مناسبة مثل محسن التوافقية. في هذه الدراسة تم استخدام السيلان كمحسن للتوافقية والامتزاجية بين البولي اثيلين واطئ الكثافة و بولي فنيل الكحول. تم تحضير العينات باستخدام الباثق ثنائي اللولب حيث تم خلط نسب مختلفة من البولي اثيلين و بولي فنيل الكحول وبإضافة %5 من مادة السيلان. عدة اختبارات أجريت لتحديد تأثير محسن التوافق على خصائص هذه الخلائط وامتزاجيتها مثل اختبار الشد والصلادة والكثافة والاشعة تحت الحمراء والتحليل الحراري التفاضلي و الفحص بالمجهر الالكتروني الماسح والمجهر الرقمي و أظهرت النتائج زيادة متانة الشد ومعامل يونك، الاستطالة عند القطع والصلادة والكثافة بإضافة السيلان اما نتائج المجهر الالكتروني الماسح والمجهر الرقمي فقد أظهرت حدوث تحسن في امتزاجية البوليمرين. Mixing two polymers usually results in an immiscible system, characterized by a coarse, easy to alter morphology, and poor adhesion between the phases. These blends have large size domains of dispersed phase and poor adhesion between them. Therefore, miscibility of polymer blend must be improved by using suitable additives such as compatibilizer. In this study 5% of silane 3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl methacrylate is used as compatibilizer to improve the miscibility and compatibility of LDPE/PVA blends. The samples were prepared by using a twin screw extruder. LDPE and PVA have been mixed with different weight proportion. Several tests were carried out to identify the compatibility and miscibility of the blends such as tensile properties, hardness, density, Fourier transforms infrared FTIR, digital microscope, scanning electron microscopy SEM and differential scanning calorimetry DSC. Result show that tensile strength, young modulus, elongation at break, density and hardness is increased with silane addition to the blends. SEM and digital microscope shows an improvement in the miscibility due to the better interaction between the two polymers as silane is added

Dynamic Weights Equations for Converting Grayscale Image to RGB Image

طريقة تحويل الصور الملونة من نظام الوان العرض إلى الصور الرمادي هو عملية بسيطة باستخدام طريقة الأوزان الثابتة للتحويل، ولكن باستخدام نفس الأوزان لاستعادة اللون من نفس الصور ليست عملية فعالة لجميع أنواع الصور لأن الصورة الرمادية تحتوي على معلومات قليلة، وغير كافية لاجراء عملية التحويل. الفكرة الأساسية في هذا البحث هي استخدام المعادلات الرياضية المستخرجة من الصورة الرمادية في عملية التحويل ،حيث يقدم هذا البحث طريقة تلوين الصورة الرمادية باستخدام الأوزان المستمدة من خصائص الصورة الرمادية. وقد تم استخراج مقياس (الانحراف، المتوسط، والانحراف المعياري) من خصائص الصور الرمادية واعتمادها في تحديد الأوزان اللازمة لنظام الوان العرض. أثبتت هذه الطريقة نجاحها في تلوين الصور مقارنة مع الطريقة التقليدية المعتمدة على الأوزان الثابتة لتلوين الصور لأنها تعتمد على الأوزان الثابتة لتحويل جميع الصور انواع الصور الرمادية.The method of converting color images from the RGB color system to grayscale images is a simple operation by using the fixed weights method of conversion, but using the same weights to restore the color of the same images is not an effective operation of all types of images because the grayscale image contains little information and it isn't worthy of conversion operation. The basic idea in this paper is to employ the mathematics equations which extracted from the grayscale image in conversion operation, this paper presents the method of coloring the grayscale image by using the weights derived from the characteristics of the grayscale image. Skewness, Mean and Standard deviation moments have been extracted from the features of grayscale images and its adoption the determine weights of the RGB color system. This method proved its success in coloring images compared to the traditional method adoption of fixed weights for coloring images because it relies on fixed weights for converting all grayscale images

Synthesis of hydroxylated and prenylated chalcones

Prenylated chalcones are among the compounds found in local Artocarpus species which reported to have interesting biological activities. Moreover, prenylated chalcones are used as traditional folk medicine for the treatment of inflammation, malarial fever and to treat the ulcers and diarrhea. In this study, 2,4-dihydroxy-3-C-prenylacetophenone and 2,4-dihydroxy-5-C-prenylacetophenone were successfully synthesized by treating resacetophenone with 2-methylbut-3-en-2-ol in the presence of BF3.Et2O as the catalyst. Meanwhile 2,4,6-trihydroxy-3-C-prenylacetophenone was synthesized using K2CO3 as the catalyst in dry acetone in the reaction of prenyl bromide with 2,4,6-trihydroxyacetophenone . In addition, two hydroxylated chalcone namely 2',4',4-trihydroxychalcone , 4',4-dihydroxychalcone) together with 2',4',4,6'-tetrahydroxy-3'-prenylchalcone were synthesized by Claisen-Schmidt condensation of various hydroxyacetophenone and 2,4,6-trihydroxy-3-C-prenylacetophenone for prenylated chalcone with 4-hydroxybenzaldyhe using BF3.Et2O. The structures of all compounds were characterized using spectroscopic methods (NMR and IR)

Comparison of keorolac with morphine for intraoperative analgesia in patients undergoing total abdominal hysterectomy

Direct laryngoscopy and endotracheal intubation during anaesthesia and cutting, stretching and tissue manipulation during surgery is the most painful time for a patient undergoing surgery. The elicited pain during a surgical procedure is associated with significant hemodynamic changes including rise in blood pressure, heart rate, sweating, pupillary dilatation etc. These hemodynamic changes are not desirable and may produce deleterious effects in patients with hypertension, ischemic heart disease and cerebro-vascular disease and impose a great challenge for anaesthesiologist to maintain physiologic homeostasis during these periods of stress. Opioids are considered to be the corner stone in the management of intraoperative and postoperative pain, morphine being the gold standard . Use of Opioids to provide intraoperative analgesia is associated with some untoward effects i.e., somnolence, respiratory depression and nausea and vomiting, which are well known causes of delay in discharge from the post anaesthesia care unit (PACU) and unplanned hospital admission or delay in discharge to home-1

Enzymes used in detergents: Lipases

Microbial lipases are an important group of biotechnologically valuable enzymes, because of the versatility of their applied properties and ease of mass production. Lipases of microbial origin are widely diversified in their enzymatic properties and substrate specificity, which make them very attractive for industrial applications. This review describes the applications of microbial lipases in detergents. Enzymes can reduce the environmental load of detergent products as the chemicals used in conventional detergents are reduced; they are biodegradable, non-toxic and leave no harmful residues. Besides lipases, other enzymes are widely used in household cleaning products, in laundering, medical, agriculture, etc. This article also reviews the use of enzymes, especially lipases as detergents and different types of lipase containing detergents available in the market.Key words: Detergents, enzymes, lipases

Comparison of the depth of cure of flowable composites polymerized at variable increment thicknesses and voltages: An In vitro study

Objectives: The aim of this study is to compare the depth of cure of two composite materials (SDR and Filtek bulk-fill) cured at variable increment depths (2, 4, and 6 mm) and voltages (180 and 220 volts). Materials and Methods: Each sample of the composite material was packed in a mold of 2 mm, 4 mm, and 6 mm and curing light (quartz tungsten halogen) of optimal intensity was exposed for 20 s at 2 different voltages on each specimen. After curing, the specimens were removed and the composite on the nonexposed end was scraped with a plastic instrument. The remaining composite thickness was measured using a digital Vernier caliper. The reading was divided by half to follow the ISO 4049 method. Independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA, and linear regression analysis were applied. Level of significance was kept at 0.01. Results: The mean DOC of SDR and Filtek were 1.93 ± 0.82 and 1.77 ± 0.65 mm. Lowering the voltage from 220 to 180 volts reduced the depth of Filtek from 1.87 ± 0.74 to 1.67 ± 0.54 mm, whereas the DOC of SDR remained unchanged at 1.93 mm at the two voltages. The adjusted R2 for the depth of cure was 0.93 when the increment thickness, voltage, and restorative material were taken together in the regression model. Conclusions: There was no statistically significant difference between SDR and Filtek for the depth of cure at 2 and 4 mm increments. However, at 6 mm increment, the SDR cured significantly deeper than the Filtek. Around 91% variation in the depth of cure of these composites materials is explained by increment thickness alone

Analysing Style and Autobiographical Element in Alice Munro’s “Dear Life”

The paper aims to stylistically analyze the autobiographical elements in Alice Munro’s Story “Dear Life.” It is discovered that from the starting to the end of the story, it is full of the events which are very closely linked to Munro’s own life. Although the events have close resemblance to Munro’s life, these are factiously and artistically depicted so that they serve the purpose of literature and the stylistic aspects of the story. The researchers in the paper analyze and discuss the stylistic characteristics of the author with the help of the textual evidence from the story and to further support these, they cite the literature on the similar aspects. Finally, it is found that Munro’s fantastic style and the blend of the autobiographical facts and fiction make her story ‘Dear Life’ very interesting and worth reading