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Abstract. Old Najaf is considered one of Iraq's most important historical centers and faces many challenges of changes that significantly impacted its architecture and traditional urban fabrics. The city is a destination of millions of pilgrims who annually visit this core at fixed periods, conducting their periodic rituals and practices. Many of these changes, which relied on the economic agenda of the developers who often targeted central areas and traditional fabrics, have adopted modern planning practices, models, and norms. Today, as a result of that change, landmarks, rich historic facades, and traditional fabrics have been radically impacted and removed; instead, they should preserve because they reflect the culture and the in/tangible heritage of the city and individuals. This paper suggests an integration between the bottom-up and top-down urban strategies to protect to address this problem. The remaining tangible heritage, and then preserve the legacy of the existing historic center of Najaf City by enacting new planning policies, rules, regulations, and raising public awareness for their heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This recent paper is focused on the effect of multiple matric suctions (90, 50, 20, 10, 7, 2, and 0 kPa) on gypseous sand in the short-term on the deformation of the Oedometer cell specimen under net stresses of 100, 200 and 400 kPa. The specimen was prepared from disturbed samples according to a degree of compaction of 90%. This percentage of density (90%) was relied upon to compare the results with a previous study, which was conducted on the same type of soil with the same density, but without the influence of external stresses. The soil samples were represented the Al-Jameah district in Al-Najaf city, Iraq. The results illustrate an increase in the deformation within a decreasing of the matric suction (wetting) under different normal stresses. The final settlement of the specimen is related to the initial load-settlement value before wetting. The deformation rate is clear and greatest when the stress is ≥200 kPa with similar rates. Low collapse potentials are revealed due to wetting progress, and this may be attributed to the short-term process (a few hours). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efficiency of solar panels is affected by high temperatures that exceed the standard operating temperature which is 25 degrees Celsius. The use of phase-changing materials is one of various methods for lowering cell temperature. However because , heat transfer studies including PCM and PV panels are extremely difficult to conduct, The study was conducted using energy relations and heat transfer principles by the numerical simulation program (COMSOL Multiphysics 5.5) to select the best model for its manufacture and conduct experiments on it this paper provides a thorough examination of how heat transfer of PV panels in combination with PCM works Through a study conducted in the city of Najaf in Iraq With temperatures reaching up to 65 degrees Celsius , The results of this study pointed out that the PV-PCM units allow achieving higher performances in comparison with a conventional PV module, especially during the hottest months. the efficiency of the photovoltaic panel, it is inversely proportional to the increase in temperature. Therefore, the efficiency increases in the presence of the phase-changing material, where it reaches (14 %) at the peak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The highways represent the economic and commercial artery within countries. In Iraq, the international express highway, established four decades ago, is of retail and economic value to link Iraqi cities and transports up to 50000 vehicles per day. Therefore, this study focused on finding an alternative road that serves more areas not previously served by the current highway. The current study presented a parallel road to the existing highway and serves many goals, including commercial transport and serving traffic by reducing traffic congestion, especially on religious occasions such as the Arabian visit and a tourist route. It also connects recreational centres such as Lake Al-Razzaza and Al-Habbaniyah, and Lake Sawa in the city of Samawah. Furthermore, this suggested highway will connect three airports: Karbala, Al-Najaf, and Al-Nasiriyah. The results indicate that the suggested way decreases the travel time by more than 1 hour in some cases and connects with Karbala and Najaf cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently the problem of desertification and degradation of land become an environmental global challenge. Iraq is facing a relatively big problem of desertification in the past ten years, especially in the central and southern sections, and the problem has been exacerbated for several reasons. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and satellite imagery play a critical role in developing global and local operational capacity and monitoring desertification in drylands. Based on these causes this research focused on the study of the state of desertification in a part of Al Najaf Governorate, with an area of (5143.40 km2), using remote sensing and (GIS). Sentinel 2 images were used for the study area during the period (2015-2021). The images were classified using a maximum likelihood method (MLC) algorithm. The change detection results revealed that the studied area is severely desertified especially in its western parts. It has suffered from wind erosion, dunes, and a lack of water resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Iraq and many Mediterranean countries, hydatid disease is endemic from a long time. The disease causes health, economic, and social disasters. Iraq has become one of the most endemic areas for this disease, particularly in the central as well as southern regions. Particularly in the areas between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers. Many farmers and sheep breeders live in these areas. The purpose of this research is to determine the relationship between hydatid disease and various variables such as the differences in infection rates between males and females, age, and geographical distribution of patients. This study included patients with hydatid disease who were admitted to the "Al-Sadr" General Hospital between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020 and there were 58 patients in total. According to the findings, the most affected areas of this disease are rural areas, and the peasantry is the most affected group of females. The reason for this is due to the nature of their work with crops and animals. The findings also revealed that females are infected at a higher rate than males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study measured the dose rate to the background radiation of soil samples collected from all Najaf districts at Al-Najaf governorate, Iraq using portable radiation dosimeter type Inspector Exp. made in the USA. Also, annual average effective dose (AAED) and excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR) were determined as well as all results were drawn by the GIS(ArcGIS 10.7.1.) technique. The results show that the average values with stander error for dose rate (µSv/h), AAED (mSv/y), and ELCR×10−3 were 0.121±0.004, 1.06±0.03, and 3.73±0.12, respectively. The background radiation from soil samples was determined for each district indicate that the Najaf city can be regarded as having normal levels of background radiation which suggests that it does not pose any health hazards or radiological effects for the inhabitant of the study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Al-Najaf sea depression is one of the regions that witnessed many climate changes during the past thirty years. In this study, remote sensing techniques (RS) and geographic information systems (GIS) applications were used to detect changes that occurred in the water area and land cover of Al-Najaf sea. The landsat5 Thematic Mapper (TM), landsat8 Operational Land Image (OLI) satellite data (30images) were used form 1990 to 2020. The supervised classification process was performed with Maximum likelihood method, the area and percentage of each class was calculated. Water and vegetation cover changes were observed using Modification of Normalized Difference Water Index (mNDWI) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), technology. In this study, will be analyzed Najaf sea depression area, precipitation and temperature, revealing the impact of climate change and human activities on long-term water changes. Through the results, the variation of the surface water area in Najaf sea depression is mainly affected by the precipitation and flow of water towards the flood plains, maximum water body area in 2013 and the minimum water bodies is in 2002. Human impacts appeared on the Najaf Sea depression, where fish farms were established on the western side of it and wells were dug for the purpose of filling them, which caused a clear increase in sea water from 2014 and reached its highest value in 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]