University of Kirkuk

This research introduces two conjugate gradient methods, BIV1 and BIV2, designed to enhance the efficiency and performance of unconstrained optimization problems with only first derivative vectors. The study explores the derivation of new conjugate gradient parameters and investigates their practical performance. The proposed BIV1 and BIV2 methods are compared with the traditional Hestenes‐Stiefel (HS) method through a series of numerical experiments. These experiments evaluate the methods on various test problems sourced from the CUTE library and other unconstrained problem collections. Key performance metrics, including the number of iterations, function evaluations, and CPU time, demonstrate that both BIV1 and BIV2 methods offer superior efficiency and effectiveness compared to the HS method. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these methods is illustrated in the context of training artificial neural networks. Experimental results show that the new methods achieve competitive performance in terms of convergence rate and accuracy.

Amidst the dual challenges of aggregate scarcity and the environmental impact of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from cement production, this study investigates the viability of palm oil clinker (POC) as a sustainable aggregate in geopolymer concrete (GPC). The lack of appropriate alternative coarse and fine aggregates essential in concrete production is one of the critical issues faced by the construction industry. This review evaluates its environmental benefits, chemical and physical attributes, and influence on GPC's microstructure. Previous studies have shown that incorporating POC in GPC significantly reduces density from 2345 to 1821 kg/m³ while maintaining competitive compressive strength, thus proving its applicability in various structural and nonstructural contexts. Moreover, GPC with POC demonstrates enhanced resistance to aggressive environmental conditions such as water absorption and resistance against acid and sulfate environments. Geopolymer mortar (GPM) exposed to sulfate attack recorded the lowest decrease in strength than GPM containing POC fine aggregates by about 20%. The use of 100% POC aggregates in GPC mix has a 3.2% water absorption, which is lower than the limit for high‐performance concrete. The results advocate for the development of POC‐aggregate GPC as an environmentally friendly construction material, contributing to the sustainable advancement of the building industry.

The main goal of this paper is to show that if a real-valued function defined on a groupoid satisfies a certain Levi-Civita-type functional equation, then it also fulfills a Cauchy–Schwarz-type functional inequality. In particular, if the groupoid is the multiplicative structure of a commutative ring, then we can establish the existence of nontrivial additive functions satisfying inequalities connected to the multiplicative structure.

The global demand for sustainable agricultural practices that enhance economic production while minimizing environmental impact is increasingly evident, particularly in cultivating healthy and nutritious cucumber fruits. Cucumbers are widely consumed fresh and are rich in vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. This study investigates the effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and chicken manure (ChM), both individually and in combination, as a natural strategy for sustainable cucumber production. In this experiment, AMF (10 g/plant) and various doses of ChM (0, 4, 8, and 12 ton/ha) were applied to assess their effects on the productivity and quality of cucumber plants. AMF application significantly enhanced carotenoid, total phenolic content (TPC) (208.31 µg GAE/g FW), total flavonoid content (TFC) (3.95 µg QE/g FW), nitrogen (3.23%), and phosphorus (1.40%) levels. The integration of AMF with ChM 8 ton/ha produced optimal results for chlorophyll pigments in both leaves (103.17 SPAD) and fruits (a-2.39 and b-1.22 µg/g FM), as well as for root length (37.05 cm), root number (22.05), average fruit weight (121.59 g), and iron (231.00 ppm). Additionally, the co-application of AMF with ChM 12 ton/ha resulted in the highest values in stem diameter (15.14 mm), dry matter content in leaves (20.74%) and fruits (3.21%), fruit number per plant (34.67), fruit weight (4.11 kg), and total antioxidant activity (TAA) (5.85 µg/g FW). These findings suggest that the combination of AMF and ChM offers a viable approach to sustainably cultivating cucumber fruits under greenhouse conditions.

This study introduces an innovation for addressing the integral challenges associated with conventional geopolymerization techniques, specifically via developing mechanochemically geopolymeric activation (MGA) stabilizers that are environmental- and user-friendly for stabilizing soil. These MGA stabilizers’ effectiveness is compared against their conventionally geopolymeric activation (CGA) counterparts. Also examined is the effect of granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) on the durability and strength of soil samples that have been stabilized, as well as the activation methods’ effect on soil strength and efficacy following sulfuric acid (H2SO4) exposure. In terms of durability, the performance of these methods was determined by having the specimens submerged in a 1% H2SO4 solution for 60 and 120 days. Numerous aspects were evaluated, including visual appearance, mass changes, unconfined compressive strength (UCS), ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), and the geopolymer-stabilized soil samples’ Fourier infrared (FTIR) spectrum. It was found that the MGA samples’ UCS bested that of the CGA-stabilized soil by 10–22%. The stabilized soil specimens’ strength increased proportionally with GGBFS content; UCS values rose from 4.5 MPa at 50% GGBFS content to 9.7 MPa at 100% GGBFS content for MGA specimens. After 60 days of H2SO4 exposure, MAG-stabilized soils retained 80% of their UCS compared to 76% for CGA samples. After 120 days, residual UCS dropped to 53% and 48% for MGA and CGA samples, respectively. Notably, soils stabilized with 75% GGBFS exhibited superior resistance to H2SO4 degradation. Mechanochemical activation and high GGBFS content facilitated the formation of homogenous geopolymer gels, which encapsulated soil particles and contributed to a denser internal structure. These findings highlight the potential of MGA stabilizers as a durable and effective solution for soil stabilization in aggressive environments.

By detecting curable retinal diseases in their early stages, optical coherence tomography (OCT) has helped people avoid or significantly lessen the severity of irreversible vision deterioration or completely losing it. Using classical convolution neural networks (CNN), it is possible to get very accurate classification of OCT images. But conventional convolutional CNN models have taken a lot of heat for their pooling layers, which supposedly bury positional interactions. Since the typical VGG16 model uses a smaller number of pooling layers, it was chosen for this work. After making some adjustments to this basic VGG16 model, we will apply a transfer learning technique for the training-phase of the resultant model. The OCT dataset has been divided into 70% for training, 20% for the testing, and 10% for the validation phase, where this validation part will never be being seen by the system during training and testing phases. Our method outperformed other methods outlined in the available literature for OCT image classification, achieving an accuracy of 97%.

Accurate cancer diagnosis is critical for effective treatment and positive patient outcomes. This study investigates the robustness of machine learning (ML) and statistical learning (SL) algorithms in classifying and diagnosing lung, prostate, breast, and heart disease. We evaluated and compared the performance of several algorithms, including support vector classifier (SVC), random forest (RF), XGBoost, decision tree (DT), elastic net, Lasso, and ridge, using four medical data sets. Multiple metrics, such as accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and area under the curve (AUC), are used to assess the performance. Hyperparameter tuning is conducted using GridSearchCV. The results demonstrated that RF and SVC achieved near-perfect accuracy (up to 98%) and AUC scores (1.00) in distinguishing between benign and malignant lung and breast cancer samples. SL algorithms exhibited robust and consistent performance for prostate cancer, achieving accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-scores of approximately 90%, making them suitable for data sets with smaller sample sizes. However, SVC-based ML algorithms outperformed SL methods in overall accuracy for prostate cancer, although SL methods provided a stable baseline. For heart disease, SVC achieved the highest accuracy (82%), while regularized SL models such as Elastic Net and Lasso performed similarly, with an accuracy of 80%. This study highlights the importance of selecting algorithms tailored to the data set’s characteristics and the specific diagnostic requirements. It also underscores the complementary strengths of ML and SL approaches, suggesting that an integrated strategy may offer the most effective solution. The findings contribute to the growing evidence supporting integrating computational methods into clinical practice to enhance diagnostic accuracy and improve patient care.

Angiogenesis is an intricate pathway that involves the formation of new blood capillaries from old, functioning ones. Improper angiogenesis is a feature of numerous maladies, including malignancy and autoimmune disorders. Indole-related derivatives are believed to interfere with the mitotic spindle, inhibiting the multiplication, and invasion of cancerous human cells. 5-bromo-2-(5-(4-nitrophenyl)-4H-1,2,4-triazol-3-yl)-1H-indole (2-NTI) is one of such compounds with outstanding anti-angiogenic, and anti-proliferative properties. To evaluate 2-NTI’s antiangiogenic and anti-oxidant activities and potential mechanisms of action in comparison with the standard agent, suramin. The rat aortic ring (RAR) and Chick chorioallantois membrane (CAM) assays were employed to determine antiangiogenic efficacy and dose response, while the DPPH assay estimated free radical scavenging activity. Besides, an MTT test was performed to evaluate antiproliferative activity in HUVECs; however, RT-PCR assessed the gene expression level of VEGF in HCT116 cells. 2-NTI displayed a significant and dose-dependent suppression of angiogenesis (83.04%) at 100 μg/mL concentration versus the negative controls in the RAR assay. 2-NTI also showed no toxicity in the HUVEC cell line, with an IC50 of 876.6 μg/mL, but it significantly reduced the formation of free radicals (IC50 of 135.2 µg/mL) and VEGF gene expression (at doses of 200 and 400 µg/mL) versus the negative controls and suramin. In CAM model, 2-NTI generated considerable blood vessel regression as compared to the negative control. 2-NTI possesses potent anti-angiogenic actions, which might be explained by its profound anti-proliferative and free radical detoxifying activities.

This paper has studied different types of walls using constant interior and exterior finishing materials (thermostone, 200‐mm thick (A); fired clay bricks, 240‐mm thick (B); hollow concrete blocks, 200‐mm thick (C); solid concrete blocks, 140‐mm thick (D); and limestone, 200‐mm thick (E)) due to the availability of many different types of building materials in Iraq and the lack of control over the best use to demonstrate how each of these materials affects a building's insulation to deliver the appropriate levels of comfort and achieve the greatest possible reduction in the electrical energy needed for air conditioning. A unique chamber was created for performing the actual trials on such walls in their natural environment, which was the climate of the city of Baghdad (zip code 10016, 33° N latitude, 44° E longitude). The tests have been done both in their current state of operation and with the addition of thermal insulation (60‐mm thick microfiber glass insulation material). The values for electricity consumption by a wall without insulation are 92, 121, 199, 148, and 138 kW/m², in cases noted as A1, B1, C1, D1, and E1, respectively. However, when the insulator is used, the values become 58, 63, 51, 100, and 92 kW/m² for the cases noted as A2, B2, C2, D2, and E2, respectively. The percentage reduction in electrical energy consumed by the air conditioner used within the room with and without thermal insulation has been recorded in the range of 50%–65% and 25%–60%, respectively. Depending on the model used, and compared with the traditional model, the saving difference with and without insulation was 15% and 35%, respectively. The best case is C2, because it has no effect on the room's interior area. Also, the cooling load was less than in other cases; it was 51 kW/m² and had the highest building electrical savings, which are 65% when taking the wall in case C1 as a reference.

Leachate infiltration into groundwater is a major contributor to groundwater pollution, posing health hazards to neighbouring communities. Thus, this study aims to utilize Geographic Information System (GIS) procedure incorporated with regression models to assess soil characteristics and evaluate soil plasticity index as an indicator for landfill construction, specifically for medical and industrial refuse. Particularly, soil samples were collected from three different public hospitals within Kirkuk city, Iraq to optimize the best site for landfill construction. The research has focused on creating digital maps and analysing various collected physical and chemical soil characteristics. In addition, single linear regression model has been employed to evaluate the soil plasticity index in terms of individual physical and chemical soil properties. Furthermore, multi-linear regression model was applied to compute soil plasticity index benefiting from individual and combined physical and chemical soil characteristics. Precise associations between PI (plasticity index) and soil properties are determined, making it possible to indirectly quantify important soil swelling characteristics with low expense and effort to be used for optimizing landfill location. Moreover, using multi-linear regression consideration, various equations are analysed, demonstrating encouraging outcomes in predicting PI values with multiple R values ranging from 0.510 to 0.689. These models illustrate the benefit of including both physical and chemical soil properties to enhance the accuracy of PI estimation to give the chance for optimizing the landfill location depending on accessible individual or combined chemical and physical soil properties.

This study aimed to evaluate the radiological impacts in Khanaqin, located in the Diyala Governorate, Iraq. The specific activities of natural radionuclides of ²³⁸U, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K in soil samples were investigated by collecting thirty composite soil samples from different locations in the area. Measurements were performed using a NaI(Tl) gamma-ray spectrometry system to acquire the data and analyses were conducted using the UCS-20 program. From the results, the average specific activities of ²³⁸U, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K were 25.15 ± 3.65 Bq kg⁻¹, 12.27 ± 2.28 Bq kg⁻¹, and 300.09 ± 14.50 Bq kg⁻¹, respectively. These results were lower than the global average recommended by UNSCEAR. The radiological risk criteria were estimated based on the specific activities of radionuclides to assess any radiological risks that may be associated with the soil of the study area under investigation. The radiological risk criteria included radium equivalent activity (Raeq), absorbed dose rate (DR), annual effective dose (AEDE), annual gonadal equivalent dose (AGDE), excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR), external hazard index (Hex), internal hazard index (Hin), representative gamma index (Iγ) and effective dose rate to different body organs (Dorgan). They were compared with the international safe limits. Overall, all the radiological risk criteria had values lower than the worldwide average recommended by UNSCEAR. This work employed statistical techniques to understand and explain the statistical characteristics of measured radionuclide-specific activities and the associated radiological risk criteria , including skewness, kurtosis, correlation coefficients, and K-means cluster analysis.

Using a high-purity germanium detector (HPGe), the natural and artificial radioactivity in soil samples taken from agricultural regions near the Al-Kasak oil refinery were examined. According to estimates, the average specific activities of 226Ra, 232Th, 40K, and 137Cs were 20, 15, 283, and 3.6 Bq kg−1, respectively. The specific activities of 226Ra, 232Th, 40K, and 137Cs in the soil samples were comparatively lower than the average values of these radionuclides worldwide. The investigation also analyzed several radiological hazard indices. The hazard indices calculated in this study were utilized to assess the potential health risks associated with radiation in the soil. The results indicate that these indices are significantly below their permissible limits. Therefore, the soil in the study area does not pose any excessive radiation exposure to the inhabitants and can be safely used as construction material without presenting an immediate radiological threat to the public.

The diagnosis, staging, and prognosis of chronic kidney disease (CKD) depend on the measurement of the glomerular filtration rate (GFR). A low GFR is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and early mortality. Current guidelines for CKD recommend using cystatin C as a supplementary test to ensure accurate estimation of eGFR. In the present study, we aimed to compare the efficacy of cystatin C-based eGFR with serum creatinine-based eGFR before and after contrast-enhanced intravenous urography (IVU). The present study is a retrospective observational study conducted in 51 patients aged 10 to 70 years. Of these patients, 21 were female and 30 were male, all of whom had kidney diseases and attended the hospital from January 2021 to January 2022. In this study, we evaluated the serum levels of urea, creatinine, and cystatin C before and after administering iodine solution to each participant. The study found no significant changes in blood urea and serum creatinine levels before and after administering the iodine solution. However, there was a significant variation in the levels of cystatin C. The levels of eGFR-dependent creatinine did not differ significantly, but there were significant changes in eGFR-dependent cystatin levels. Our findings suggest that cystatin C is a more accurate method of monitoring kidney function compared to creatinine levels. Additionally, cystatin C appears to be a more reliable marker of renal failure than serum creatinine and urea.

The generation potential of the Zagros Basin in Iraq is a critical aspect of exploration and development strategies in the province. A specific maturation mechanism and the timing of petroleum expulsion from the probable source rock interval remain unresolved. The gaps in this study are addressed through investigations of organic-rich intervals with accompanying oil expulsion processes. In this regard, forty-seven core and ditch-cutting samples were geochemically analyzed to evaluate organic matter enrichment, maturation, hydrocarbon potential, and time for source-rock-derived hydrocarbons and expulsion. The geochemical results revealed fair to very-good potential as evidenced by elevated organic carbon (TOC) content which reached up to 3.95 wt% and genetic potential (GP) of up to 8.52 mg HC/g rock. Hydrogen index (HI) values in the range of 171 to 462, along with Rock-Eval Tmax values above 430 °C, confirmed that the evaluated interval has Type II and mixed II/III kerogens. The results of basin models demonstrated that the conversion of kerogen into oil began during the upper Cretaceous, precisely between 77 and 67 Ma, while the expulsion started during the middle Miocene (22 Ma) till the present day (0 Ma). Time plots of this basin showed that the modeled vitrinite reflectance (Easy%VRo) values during the oil expulsion phase are in the range of 0.74–0.83, and the transformation ratios (%TR) are higher than 55%. These findings establish the Chia Gara Formation as the main organic-rich source rocks in this region, highlighting its significant oil generation/expulsion capabilities, which may serve as a source for future hydrocarbon exploration in the Iraqi Zagros Basin.

This study examines the viability of using construction waste, specifically recycled brick waste powder (RBWP), as an alternative conventional industrial byproduct (fly ash) in the manufacturing of engineered geopolymer composites (EGC). The EGC mixtures are made with 40 μm diameter and 12 mm length polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fiber. RBWP replaces class‐F fly ash in EGC by 0, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, and 100%. This study produces six distinct EGC mixtures in total. The flexural strength, abrasion resistance, sorptivity, and water absorption of the EGC are investigated. Microstructural characterization is carried out using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Based on the results, when fly ash is replaced by 40% and 100%, respectively, adding RBWP to the EGC mixes significantly improves flexural strength by 39% and midspan deflection by 169%. Nevertheless, abrasion resistance significantly improves when fly ash is completely replaced with RBWP, even though sorptivity and water absorption increase by about 128% and 240%, respectively. The volume change is reduced by 25.4% when RBWP is used. Furthermore, the SEM study shows that the RBWP undergoes active geopolymerization in the EGC mixes.

Nanobiostimulants, comprising nanoparticles and biostimulants, represent an emerging and promising domain within agricultural science. The integration of these specialized nanomaterials into agricultural practices aims to boost crop productivity while concurrently moderating the adverse impact of environmental stresses on plant life. The current use of chemical fertilizers poses significant risks to human health and ecological networks, making the application of nanobiostimulants a compelling alternative. These stimulants demonstrate the potential of strengthening plant growth along with enhanced nutritional value, improving productivity, prolonging shelf-life, and reinforcing plants against biotic and abiotic stressors. Despite their potential, the widespread adoption of nanobiostimulants faces challenges. The lack of comprehensive knowledge regarding the complex interrelationship between biostimulants, nanoparticles, and plant biology hampers their broad recognition and utilization in agricultural sector. Addressing this gap necessitates extensive research and exploration to formulate more suitable and commercially viable nanobiostimulants for the global farming community. This book chapter highlights the role of nanobiostimulants in addressing the challenges caused by both abiotic and biotic stresses in plants. The assessment underscores the critical importance of optimizing the synergistic interaction between nanoparticles and biostimulants to ensure efficient delivery and release at the specifically targeted sites, thereby creating effective and precise nanobiostimulants. The development of more sophisticated and practical nanobiostimulants is a pressing need, requiring the application of state-of-the-art methodologies to comprehend the multifaceted factors that drive agricultural success.