UKH Journal of Science and Engineering

to get used to technological services such as websites, television, mobile applications, and so on. This project aims to design a prototype system for deaf people to help them to communicate with other people and computers without relying on human interpreters. The proposed system is for letter-based Kurdish Sign Language (KuSL) which has not been introduced before. The system would be a real-time system that takes actions immediately after detecting hand gestures. Three algorithms for detecting KuSL have been implemented and tested, two of them are well-known methods that have been implemented and tested by other researchers, and the third one has been introduced in this paper for the 1 st time. The new algorithm is named Grid-based gesture descriptor. It turned out to be the best method for the recognition of Kurdish hand signs. Furthermore, the result of the algorithm was 67% accuracy of detecting hand gestures. Finally, the other well-known algorithms are named scale invariant feature transform and speeded-up robust features, and they responded with 42% of accuracy. In this study, source rock characteristics and lateral changes in thermal maturity of the Sargelu Formation (Middle Jurassic) in three outcrops were studied. The formation’s outcrops can be found in the High Folded and Imbricated Zones of Iraqi Tectonic Division. To achieve the main goals of this study, the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and Rock-Eval pyrolysis were performed on the organic matter (OM) of the Sargelu sediments. Pristane/Phytane ratios for analyzed samples indicate reducing conditions (anoxic) during sedimentation. Moreover, based on C 29 /C 30 hopanes ratios the sediments of the Sargelu Formation associated with clay-rich source rock. Biomarker thermal maturity parameters display that all samples are thermally in Oil Window at least. The biomarker findings reveal that the samples of Walasmt and Barsarin are seem more mature than Banik section.The values for total organic carbon percentage of the Sargelu Formation may show Excellent, Very Good, and Poor quality source rock. The pyrolysis executed for studied samples revealed the kerogen in Banik section belongs to Types II and III (Probably Oil/Gas- prone), while Barsarin and Wala simt sections obtained Types III-IV Kerogen (Gas-prone). Pyrolysis parameters suggested Early Mature Stage in Banik, While Overmature in Barsarin and Wala simt. The data also show that OM of the Sargelu Formation in Banik section is in Oil Widow, while in Barsarin and Wala simt are in Gas Window. Currently, no offline tool is available for Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in Kurdish. Kurdish is spoken in different dialects and uses several scripts for writing. The Persian/Arabic script is widely used among these dialects. The Persian/ Arabic script is written from Right to Left (RTL), it is cursive, and it uses unique diacritics. These features, particularly the last two, affect the segmentation stage in developing a Kurdish OCR. In this article, we introduce an enhanced character segmentation based method which addresses the mentioned characteristics. We applied the method to text-only images and tested the Kurdish OCR using documents of different fonts, font sizes, and image resolutions. The results of the experiments showed that the accuracy rate of character recognition of the proposed method was 90.82% on average. Four landslides of different sizes had occurred in 2012 along the main paved road between Dukan and Surdash. The landslides are within the Kometan Formation, which consists mainly of well-bedded and jointed marly limestone. The landslides are located in a narrow syncline trending NW–SE in between Khalikan and Kalo anticlines. The main reason of the landslides is the haphazard road cuts during the road construction and widening of the road latter on. Another reason that had accelerated the landslide is the fluctuation of water level in Dukan reservoir. The water level reaches the downslope area of the landslides. Satellite imagery was used to study the parameters of the landslides and have performed a fieldwork to confirm the acquired parameters and deduced other indications of the landslides, besides checking their stability. Landslide possibility study was performed using landslide possibility index at each landslide area and has found that the whole area is unstable showing high possibility of refailure. Stereographic presentation for the three landslides was used to show the relationship between bedding and joint planes and the road cuts trends. It was concluded that, in next rainy season, the whole area may form a severe geological hazard if necessary precautions are not considered. Therefore, urgent precautions were recommended to keep the slopes alongside the road cut as stable as possible. A B S T R A C In all countries, an accurate geologic map is needed to understand the Earth’s resources. It is the vital source of information for various aspects of land-use planning, such as assessment of oil wealth, utilization of the decision-makers, and planners. In the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, unfortunately, detailed geological maps at a scale of 1:20,000 are not available, especially along the extreme northern and northeastern parts where minerals showing exist there. However, geological maps at a scale of 1:1,00,000 and 1:2,50,000 are available, but they cannot be utilized for the above-mentioned uses. Solar thermal applications vary widely across many different fields. This research aims to introduce the concept of using solar thermal energy in a new application for recycling waste plastic for use in 3D printing. In some countries or regions, waste plastic is not collected for recycling and thrown into landfills. This leads to serious local and global environmental pollution. In additive manufacturing, plastic is one of the main materials used to build 3D models. In this work, we suggest a novel way to produce extruded filament for 3D printing from waste plastic using solar energy. The concept relies on using a Scheffler fixed focus solar collector to heat the barrel of a filament extruder rather than using electrical heaters. The barrel of the filament extruder is heated by a receiver in the focal point of the solar collector. The molten plastic is then extruded through a nozzle to produce filament. This method is shown to be feasible as this paper presents the design and testing of the solar-extrusion system where the receiver is heated to 160°C and regulated for a short time. The maximum receiver temperature is shown to be 229°C which is sufficient for extruding most types of filaments. Stemming is one of the main important preprocessing techniques that can be used to enhance the accuracy of text classification. The key purpose of using the stemming is combining the number of words that have the same stem to decrease high dimensionality of feature space. Reducing feature space causes to decline time to construct a model and minimize the memory space. In this paper, a new stemming approach is explored for enhancing Kurdish text classification performance. Tree data structure and Porter’s stemmer algorithms are incorporated for building the proposed approach. The system is assessed through using support vector machine and decision tree (C4.5) to illustrate the performance of the suggested stemmer after and before applying it. Furthermore, the usefulness of using stop words is considered before and after implementing the suggested approach.