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Based on the results of standard penetration tests (SPTs) conducted in Al-Basrah governorate, this research aims to present thematic maps and equations for estimating the bearing capacity of driven piles having several lengths. The work includes drilling 135 boreholes to a depth of 10 m below the existing ground level and three standard penetration tests (SPT) at depths of 1.5, 6, and 9.5 m were conducted in each borehole. MATLAB software and corrected SPT values were used to determine the bearing capacity of driven piles in Al-Basrah. Several-order interpolation polynomials are suggested to estimate the bearing capacity of driven piles, but the first-order polynomial is considered the most straightforward. Furthermore, the root means squared error (RMSE) for all suggested polynomials are roughly the same. The production of thematic maps demonstrates the variation in bearing capacity of driven piles over the entire territory of Al-Basrah governorate in correlation with different depths. The results of the statistical equations showed that there is good agreement with those obtained from the SPT data. When compared with the observed values from SPT, the allowable bearing capacity results for the driven piles ranged from (−3 to +38)%. The main results of this study showed a variation of 30% between calculated and estimated values of bearing capacity of driven piles for all lengths of piles at a 95% confidence interval.

Copyright of Journal of Engineering (17264073) is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Utilizing a turnkey approach to deliver a construction project entails significant risks from the contractor's perspective. Essentially, the owner awaits project completion without commitments regarding additional expenditures incurred by the contractor during the project's duration. This paper specifically focuses on estimating and analyzing the contingency value for residential turnkey projects in Saudi Arabia. The contingency value across the project's life cycle is estimated using six Artificial Neural Network (ANN) models, which are compared to identify the best-trained network according to project complexity, contingency factor, and contingency impact during the project phases. The output layer provides the contingency factor percentages for each project phase. A 13-story reinforced concrete (RC) residential building established in one of Saudi Arabia's cities was selected to implement the developed methodology. The contingency estimation, performed using @Risk 7.5 and NeuralTools 7.5, was determined to be 11.34% and was distributed across the five phases of the project's life cycle: 0.30% for predesign, 0.99% for design, 2.61% for preconstruction, 6.33% for construction, and 1.12% for postconstruction. Furthermore, it was found that the estimated contingency varies based on project complexity, which is 7.20% for low complexity, 8.16% for medium complexity, 9.41% for complicated, and 11.34% for very complicated projects. Historical data and peer review approaches are employed to validate the results, both of which are endorsed by professionals in this field. This paper highlights two main contributions: Firstly, it significantly enhances risk management by facilitating a comprehensive understanding and systematic analysis of risks, thus improving the contractors' ability to mitigate potential negative impacts on projects. Secondly, it supports more informed decision-making through the use of advanced techniques to estimate and analyze contingency values. These contributions are critical for contractors engaged in Saudi construction projects, particularly those involving residential buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective facility asset management requires specific skills and tools to optimize the use of limited resources, making a decision support system essential. This research introduces a comprehensive decision support system, which is a framework organized into three models: the criticality model, the rehabilitation model, and the optimum criticality model to manage the rehabilitation of facility assets. The criticality model utilizes the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assess the group of assets. Emphasizing criticality as a central management factor, this model lays the foundation for subsequent decision-making. The rehabilitation model employs an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), integrating Customer Level of Service (CLoS), Technical Level of Service (TLoS), and asset criticality to determine appropriate rehabilitation actions. NeuralTools 7.5 is leveraged for precise predictions of rehabilitation strategies tailored to specific assets. The third model, optimum criticality, focuses on prioritizing rehabilitation activities within the constraints of limited budgets. Lingo 20.0 is utilized to optimize rehabilitation activities, considering budget limitations and other constraints, offering a strategic approach to maximize the impact of available resources. This integrated framework provides decision-makers with a systematic and data-driven approach to facility management, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of rehabilitation actions. An academic building was chosen as a hypothetical example to implement the three models and suggest the essential considerations for managing both the academic building itself and other infrastructure assets. The results obtained demonstrate that the principles and methodologies encapsulated in this project can be extrapolated and scaled up for application to large-scale infrastructure assets, ensuring the sustenance of the requisite level of service and the management of acceptable risk on a broader scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Education & Science is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Geographic Information System (GIS) is one of the modern database software which is used to collect, analyze, display, processing and produce geographic information maps for a specific objective. In addition, a statistical analysis can be generated within GIS on specific data to produce quantitative results. In this study, the GIS utilized to produce thematic maps showing the variation of bearing capacity of shallow foundation in Al-Basrah province soil. All the features mentioned above illustrate the importance of GIS exploring more valuable results such as the bearing capacity of shallow foundation from the results of standard penetration tests (SPT) conducted in Al-Basrah province soil. The total number of boreholes drilled was 135 distributed irregularly in the study area. In each borehole, three SPTs were performed at depths of 1.5, 6, and 9.5 m measured from the existing ground level (EGL). The results of the study can be summarized by the production of thematic maps showing the variation of the bearing capacity of the soil over the whole area of Al-Basrah city correlated with several depths. These maps can be used by different local authorities to predict soil bearing capacity and choose a suitable type of foundation. In addition, it can be utilized to assess the foundations of existing and irregularly constructed buildings and to assess the extent of the risks of failure and collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Job stress (JS) is a significant issue in the construction industry of developing countries. This study aims to examine the impact of error-management climate (EMC), safety climate (SC), and psychological capital (PC) (as a mediator) on employee JS in the construction industry, and establish relationships between these constructs. A questionnaire survey was conducted to gather data from 144 respondents. The study's hypothesized relationships were tested using partial-least-squares structural-equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The analysis indicated a positive association between EMC and PC. Conversely, EMC did not have a negative impact on JS. The study also established a constructive relationship between SC and PC, and a significant negative association between SC and JS. Regarding mediation, PC was found to partially mediate the effect of EMC on JS, accounting for 55% of the variance accounted for (VAF). The study's innovative contribution lies in exploring the limited research on PC within the construction industry, and investigating the interactions among SC, EMC, PC, and JS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the research is to demonstrate the benefit from internal transfer rates in evaluating profitability centers, and to clarify methods for using activities based on activities in determining internal transfer prices in economic units, as well as showing the impact of applying internal transfer rates based on activities in increasing the accuracy of costs and giving more detailed information and its reflection on A correct image of the evaluation of profitability centers, and the research problem revolved around whether the use of internal transfer rates based on activities would enhance the performance evaluation of the economic unit in the research sample. Leather Industries (research sample), which is one of the companies affiliated to the Ministry of Industry to evaluate the performance of its profit centers. The research reached a set of conclusions, the most important of which were: (The application of the ABC system in the small tanning center in the laboratory, the sample of the research provided a fair product cost for the products of the center due to the identification and analysis of the activities in this center and the diagnosis of those activities that add value and those that do not add value and on it each activity It bears the costs it deserves, which helps to determine a transfer price on the basis of a fair college cost, which helps the managers of profitability centers to take the right decisions and evaluate the performance of these centers due to their adoption of the basis of activities that provides better information for managing costs for those activities. The research came out with a set of recommendations, the most important of which were : (The Iraqi economic units, especially the research sample laboratory, should adopt the appropriate transfer price policy according to the nature of their activity and products, and use transfer prices as a basis for transferring products to carry out internal transfers between the company’s sectors and in a manner that contributes to evaluating the performance of those sectors). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The blue ocean strategy is one of the important strategies that seek to achieve success in the economic unit by occupying a distinct competitive position through which other economic units cannot compete, by adopting new markets for their new distinguished products or services, attracting new customers and increasing customer loyalty. Its products, thus achieving a unique competitive advantage that competitors cannot imitate and thus achieving abundant profits with its intelligence and strategic leadership. One of the most important findings of the research is that the blue ocean strategy constitutes a framework that can contribute to adding an innovative competitive advantage to the research sample bank, through its four dimensions, in order to achieve the uniqueness of the bank in providing distinguished and unique services about competitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Older people are more susceptible to Alzheimer's disease (AD), a neurological illness. Alzheimer's dementia now affects those aged 65 and beyond. A forgetting of earlier conversations or occurrences is the disease's first symptom. Serious memory loss and decreased ability to do daily tasks occur as the illness progresses. The damage first shows up in the part of the brain that regulates memory, but it happens years before any symptoms develop. The brain eventually becomes much smaller as the loss of neurons spreads to other regions. Mild, Moderate, and Severe are the three stages of the sickness. The early stage, also known as the intermediate stage, features emerging problems. combination of positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging data for neuroimaging. This new development in medicine calls for the use of cutting-edge instruments and the processing of massive volumes of data, where artificial intelligence is applied (AI), contributes significantly to the presentation of disease-patient dynamics, which is essential for timely/optimal diagnosis, monitoring, and action. The essential components are predictive models and algorithms. in this cuttingedge industry. In this study, we provide a summary of important subjects relating to the describing the algorithms and how they are used predictive of the progression of AD and AI's application to AD biomarkers, also. Precision medicine is a new method for treating and preventing disease that integrates multimodal data with elements including lifestyle, genetics, physiology, and environmental factors. Precision medicine uses AI algorithms. In this this study provides an overview of the key ideas relating to the application of AI in AD research, with a focus on ML and DL models. Each section's subjects will be chosen based on those that were most frequently used to describe AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the research is to direct the attention of the bank's management to the types of expenses that are disbursed during the year and which are related to quality costs for proper planning of the disbursement process after categorizing them into its components and paying attention to the costs of compatibility (conformance) and reducing the costs of non-conformity (non-conformity) to the acceptable limit that enables the bank to increase the quality. The service marketed to customers and then increase its profits. One of the objectives of the research is to design a system for quality costs and its application at the research sample bank, and to achieve the objective of the research, the research sought in its practical aspect to choose the Iraqi Investment Bank as one of the commercial banks operating in Iraq as a field for research and application of the proposed system for quality costs, and the research reached a set of results, the most important of which were, The benefits of the proposed design that it provides to management are embodied in performance evaluation and may motivate it to take other measures aimed at improving performance. Improving performance leads to two-way effects. The first is to reduce quality costs, which in turn leads to a reduction in service costs for the bank and then increases productivity and increases profits. The other of the effects is improving the quality of the service, which is part of it by reducing the customer's waiting time and speed in providing service, accuracy and excluding errors, which leads to an increase in customers' frequency to the bank and an increase in the volume of their transactions and then an increase in deposits and an increase in revenues and finally an increase in profits. All these positive effects are considered benefits achieved by the system, and the proposed design showed that it reduces the cost of auditing or the cost of conformity and the cost of errors and elimination of them. This is in application of the philosophy of minor destruction in the industry, and this may be the most need in the banking service, if it is represented in the aim of eliminating errors, which means improving performance and reducing costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of companies to develop their cost systems represents their ability to keep pace with the technological development of the industrial environment, which requires the use of modern techniques and methods. the research aims to identify and use the most important modern developments in the manufacturing environment, represented in the accounting for throughput entrance, to show its impact on the cost system, and to evaluate the extent to which accounting for throughput provides the appropriate information and help it determine how to rationalize industrial costs and identify obstacles. The research problem centered on the question: Does accounting for throughput provide the necessary information to rationalize the cost structure in the contemporary manufacturing environment? Based on the foregoing, the research hypothesis is that the integration of accounting for throughput will determine the costs that guide operational decisions and increase their quality. This research has been applied in a private sector company in northern Iraq, it is the Rogano Company for Insulating Glass and aluminum, as the necessary data were extracted to build and test the suitability of the information generated in rationalizing a package of operational decisions that are repetitive in almost every industrial unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]