BACKGROUND: HLA-B27 can effect clinical presentation and course of ankylosing spondylitis. Different detection techniques of HLA-B27 are available with variable sensitivities and specificities. OBJECTIVE: To compare serologic and molecular diagnostic techniques of detecting HLA-B27 status and to correlate it with some clinical variables among ankylosing spondylitis patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 83 Iraqi patients with ankylosing spondylitis. Clinical and laboratory evaluations were reported. HLA-B27 status was determined in all patients by real-time PCR using HLA-B27 RealFast™ kit; ELISA method was used as well to detect soluble serum HLA-B27 antigens using Human Leukocyte Antigen® kit. RESULTS:

Cervical cancer is the third most common cancer in women worldwide, and it has the fourth highest mortality rate among cancers in women. The present study aimed to reveal the impact of age factor in cervical abnormalities and cancers incidence in some Iraqi married women. 150 scraping cervical cells samples were collected from the women clinically diagnosed with cervical abnormalities and cancer who were divided into two groups; the first group included the women with abnormal pap smear which revealed 13.33% of women were less than 30 years and followed by 66.66% of women whose age between 30-50 years and 20% of them were more than 50 years old. While the second group iclude the women with normal Pap smear (Healthy women) which revealed tha

One of the unique properties of laser heating applications is its powerful ability for precise pouring of energy on the needed regions in heat treatment applications. The rapid rise in temperature at the irradiated region produces a high temperature gradient, which contributes in phase metallurgical changes, inside the volume of the irradiated material. This article presents a comprehensive numerical work for a model based on experimentally laser heated AISI 1110 steel samples. The numerical investigation is based on the finite element method (FEM) taking in consideration the temperature dependent material properties to predict the temperature distribution within the irradiated material volume. The finite element analysis (FEA) was carried

The convolutional neural networks (CNN) are among the most utilized neural networks in various applications, including deep learning. In recent years, the continuing extension of CNN into increasingly complicated domains has made its training process more difficult. Thus, researchers adopted optimized hybrid algorithms to address this problem. In this work, a novel chaotic black hole algorithm-based approach was created for the training of CNN to optimize its performance via avoidance of entrapment in the local minima. The logistic chaotic map was used to initialize the population instead of using the uniform distribution. The proposed training algorithm was developed based on a specific benchmark problem for optical character recog

Optical burst switching (OBS) network is a new generation optical communication technology. In an OBS network, an edge node first sends a control packet, called burst header packet (BHP) which reserves the necessary resources for the upcoming data burst (DB). Once the reservation is complete, the DB starts travelling to its destination through the reserved path. A notable attack on OBS network is BHP flooding attack where an edge node sends BHPs to reserve resources, but never actually sends the associated DB. As a result the reserved resources are wasted and when this happen in sufficiently large scale, a denial of service (DoS) may take place. In this study, we propose a semi-supervised machine learning approach using k-means algorithm

Background: Relapse of previously moved teeth, is major clinical problem in orthodontics with respect to the goals of successful treatment. This study investigated the effect of orthodontic relapse on the proliferation of fibroblast and epithelial rests of Malassez cells in periodontal ligament of rat molars. Materials and Methods: Sixteen ten-week- old male Wister rats were randomly divided into four groups composed of four animals each: Group I received no orthodontic force (control). In both Group II and Group III, uniform standardized expansive springs were used for moving the maxillary first molars buccally for periods of one and three weeks respectively. The spring initially generated an average expansive force of 20 g on each side.

Citizenship education is the effective educational tool in building a citizen who is able to participate in building his country. This can only come through the educational efforts that teachers make in the classroom. Such a step requires teachers to have knowledge of citizenship education, its principles, and the foundations for its development. Thus, the study aims to examine the degree of social studies teachers' knowledge of the dimensions of citizenship education at the basic education schools in the Sultanate of Oman. It also aims to examine its relationship with a set of variables. The researchers used the quantitative descriptive approach to achieve the objectives of the study. It further adopted a test tool, which consisted in i