Greetings from California

Greeting to all friends and co-workers in Libya and everywhere all over the world. This post is published from Anahiem, Los Angeles, California. I've arrived to Los Angeles on 22.08.2008 for a multipurpose trip. The main reason for coming here is to attaind the IECC5 (Fifth International Conference of the American Socity of Civil Engineers) that took place during 27-29 August 2008, in Irvine. The other reason that make me come earley almost one week before the conference is to have a brief tour in Clifornia. Actually, this was my first visit to California. I'll share with you part of my experience through this post and future post when I get back home and find more time to talk about this fascinating trip. For the time beign I'll post number of pics with a brief captions and will leave details to future posts.

Presenting a paper in the conference. The title was "Asphalt Pavement Temperature Models for Libya". This is reporting of the research work we have done last year, that I've mentioned in an earlear post. The conference was interesting and very successful.

At the Conference's Banquet, with Dr. Ammar from the Nahreen Univ. (Iraq) and Mr. Al Janabi of Nakheel Marinas (Dubai).

View of Los Angeles highway captured through the car window. LA got one of the remarkable freeway networks in the world. At the Southeren entrance to LA city you'll ride over a 5-level highway intersection. Chevorlet Malibu, the rented car I've used in touring California. I've drove from LA to San Francisco, back yo La and then to Irvine. It is the best way to move around in California. The car rent is cheap BUT the fuel is very expensive.

The Cable care is still in operation in the streets of San Francisco. 0-emission mode of urban transport.

The Golden Gate Bridge that connects San Francisco to the mainland. It is Red not gold but it is a great civil engineering project. It is a long story, may be we will come back to it in future.


In front of the City Hall in San Francisco. One of the land marks of this uniqe city. There is a lot to be said about this fascinating city.

Check this blog from time to time for future updates.

Spring 2008

TIME SCHEDULE FOR SPRING 2008

This Spring I'm teaching 3 courses, two undergraduate courses at the University of Al-Fatah and one graduate course at the Academy of Graduate Studies. I'm also supervising 5 MS thises at the two institutions. The time table is as follows:

Sat/Mon : CE314 (11:00 - 12:30) CE517 (14:00 - 15:30)
Wed : TE606 (12:00 - 15:00)

For info about each course please visit the course webpage using the links on the right side bar.

TE 610 Course Launched

Today was the first licture in TE610; the subject was World Climate with special reference to Hot Arid Climates. For more info about the course, please visit the course webpage. It contains announcements, notes, assays ..etc. and you can post your questions and comments.

Happy Aied .. عيد سعيد

Happy Aied to all Muslim bloggers and readers

Long time I have not posted "since March 2007". It was due to being busy at work and travelling. But I do read some Libyan blogs from time to time. This Eied was a great time to be with family, relatives and friends. The only foto I have on my PC ready for post is this for my son Walied on the hourse back. Hopefuly this return to blogging will be followed by more useful post soon.

Last Term New Term

The last fall term (Fall 2006) looks to be a very long term. Longer than usual; it started September 2006 and ended just last week (February 2007). Through this term we had Ramadan, two Aids, haj, new year, ..etc. You can add that we had all seasons; Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring. At last we were about to celebrate the end of this term. The first announcement in the celebration was the begining of the new term (Spring 2007). This we can call "Late end and Hurry start". Anway, I'm going to the new term with more teaching and research load!. Three of our collegues in the department are in a spatical leave, so I have to take more courses. The courses are:

• CE314 Highway Engineering (two groups)
• CE 617 Advanced Pavement Design
• TE606 Asphalt Mix Design and Construction

hopefully I can have some time for blogging and dream of peaceful summer holiday.

New Highway Research Projects Launched

Two new highway research projects were launched in cooperation with my friend Dr. Ahmad Bensaeed. These two new projects are registered in the MS program at the Academy of Graduate Studies (Tripoli, Libya). Two civil engineers will carry out these projects:

1. Mr. Abdulaziz El-Bawey - Quality Control in Highway Construction
2. Mr. Khalifa Saad Khalifa - Highway Maintenance Manual

These two project will span for 7 months and expected to end by September 2007.

More information about these projects and progress reports will be posted from time to time.

Aid Uddha Mubarek اضحى مبارك

عيد اضحى مبارك للجميع .. اعاده الله بالخير واليمن والبركة

Uddha Mubark to all Muslims and Happy New Year 2007 to all

Visited Parts of the world

Inspired by some blogs I've tried this site and found it GREAT
create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

First Results of Pavement Measurement

Finally we managed to get the first lot of readings from the Heara station for the measurement of pavement temperature. We experienced some problems with number of the thermocouples, but we still got enough reading points through the pavement depth. The graph shows the change of pavement temperature with time for a typical day (24.08.2006). The shown curves are for the top surface, 20 mm depth, air temperature, ..etc. We have recorded part of August, September and October. The station will countinou work for one year.

Ramadan Kareem

Ramadan kareem to everybody and a pray to ALLAH that he may accept our deeds. This Ramadan work as usual (pls check the alteration in time tables). In Ramadan we are encouraged as a Muslims to be more active in both warship and work and great rewards are waiting us at the end of this holly month. Patience, help and sincerity are the main characteristics of Muslim's behavior in this month.

Back to Business

This week is the first week in the new academic year 2006/2007 (Fall 2006 term). My first lecture will be on Wednesday. This term I’ll be teaching 4 courses; two undergraduate courses in the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Al-fatah and two Graduate courses, one in Al-Fatah University and one in the Academy of Graduate Studies.
This term I’ll do more effort in encouraging students to use the internet. I’ve created a webpage for each course (Blog) so student can visit to find out information about the course and also to give their feedback (questions, comments, ..etc.). I’m expecting an interesting discussions and useful internet-home works this term.
The websites of this term’s courses are:
· CE416 Geometric Design of Highways
· CE517 Pavement Design
· TE610 Asphalt Pavements in Hot Arid Climates

Good luck everybody . . .

Back from Umra

Assalam alykum:
I was away for 2 weeks for Umra (visit to Makka and Madena). It was a great spirtual visit and interesting experience with the family. I pray and hope all of you can do it.
University will start soon (next week), a lot of preparations and follow up works has to be done. I'll be back posting about our research activities soon.

Launch of Heara Station

Pleased to announce the launch of our first station for the measurement of pavement temperature in Libya. Station # 1 is “HEARA” station; is located at Wadi Elhera on Azizya – Gharian Road, close to the police checkpoint just before the road starts to climb the mountain to Gharian. The measurement of temperature will be of the actual road itself. We have cut a channel in the pavement and connected the thermocouples at different levels through the pavement depth.

The thermocouples are connected to a data logger to record and store the measurement during day and night. The station also contains a special instrument to measure the solar radiation.

These measurements will give us an idea about the temperature regimes that encountered in the pavement in this area. Later on it will be analyzed and used to develop a new model for predicting the pavement temperature for design purposes.
The importance of this study comes from the fact that it is the first in Libya and its results will be very useful for the development of a new and rational design and construction procedures.

Heara Sta. is supervised by Eng. Ahmad Hassan, PG at the Dept. of Civil Eng., Univ. of AL-Fateh, Tripoli.

Proposal for New Pave-Temp Station

Engineer Khalifa Saad from Agilat (West Libya) doing his MS degree in Highway Engineering at the Academy of Graduate Studies (Tripoli, Libya) will join the research program "Measurment of Pavement Temperature in Libya" by establishing a new station in some location at the west of the country. He got a promise from the GPCMPT to sponser the project.
To order the data logger Khalif pls follow the link below.

We still need other researchers to join the program and establish a measurement stations in other parts of Libya.

Measuring Pavement Temperature Update

Dr. Imbarek Blog
To measure the pavement temperature you need to have a pavement and measuring tools and somebody to do that. That’s all !. We discovered that isn’t all; you need to have permission to do that. Where do you think the permission should come from. Obviously, from the authority responsible for highways. Wright, we have arranged for that permission and got it in one week, but there is an extra one to be obtained from the Security (we never thought of that one). This extra permission took us one month to get it. We were hopping to start taking readings some time in June so we can have a good deal of summer season (June, July, August and September). Unfortunately, due to this delays we missed June, July and may be August. It means to get enough data for our model we have to wait for an other summer to come (It is a huge delay). The good news that we will start some time this month and will continuo our measurements up to next summer.

Qana’s second massacre

Qana’s second massacre

This is the e-mail I’ve sent to President Bush and vise-president Cheney about the American role in the Israeli ware on Lebanon:

PLANTING MORE EVIL AND GETING MORE HATERED

Global leadership, exporting civilization and democracy, supporting human rights and keeping world peace has nothing to do with this current American role in the war on Lebanon. Everybody in this world knows that the American administration is playing a dirty role in this conflict by supporting Israel and encouraging it to commit more offensives and mascaras and by abstracting the international community’s efforts in trying to stop this evil war.
Probably you thing that you are scarifying innocent people’s lives and other country’s peace and stability for the extracting of what you call “TERORISM’S GRASS ROOTS”
Actually, what you are doing is PLANTING MORE EVIL in the Arab and Muslim world and you’ll GET MORE HATERED which means developing more future terrorism
May be you can’t accept responsibility of the past BUT you are certainly responsible for what are you doing now. SO STOP PLAYING DIRTY ROLE AND THING WISELY ABOUT THE FUTURE.

Anyone of you can build some pressure on the white house by doing the same. The e-mail addresses are:
President Bush: comments@whitehouse.gov
Vice-president Cheney: vice_president@whitehouse.gov

Please act now.

Measuring Pavement Temperatur-Test Station

Thanks to the cooperation of NESCO and the GRC, now we are in a position to launch our resarch program for the measurement of Pavement temperature in Libya. Mr. Ahmad Hassan from the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Al-Fateh will carry out stage I of the program. The first test station will be installed at Beer Ayad, South west of Tripoli. Infrastructure of the station will be prepared by GRC and the instrumentation is supplied by NESCO.

Pavement Temperature

Interested postgraduates at the department of Civil Engineering, University of Al-Fateh are invited to register in an MSc research study under the title of: Measuing the Pavement Temperature in Libya. The research is sponsored by NESCO and is ready to be lunched as soon as possible. Please e-mail or call in at my office.

Hello;

• To my friends: These days I'm busy on the final exams in both the University and the Academy. We'll be finishing by the end of June. Any vacation pland or proposals will be considered some time in July.

• To Postgrads: Please contact me by the end of June to schedule your contacts and meeting during summer holiday.

• To my family members: Thank you for your patence and please extend it for two weeks more