Here we present the results of experiments involving cynomolgus macaques, in which a model of traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) was created by using a balloon catheter inserted into the epidural space. Prior to the creation of the lesion, we inserted an EMG recording device to facilitate measurement of tail movement and muscle activity before and after TSCI. This model is unique in that the impairment is limited to the tail: the subjects do not experience limb weakness, bladder impairment, or bowel dysfunction. In addition, 4 of the 6 subjects received a combination treatment comprising thyrotropin releasing hormone, selenium, and vitamin E after induction of experimental TSCI. The subjects tolerated the implantation of the recording device and did not experience adverse effects due the medications administered. The EMG data were transformed into a metric of volitional tail moment, which appeared to be valid measure of initial impairment and subsequent natural or treatment-related recovery. The histopathologic assessment demonstrated widespread axon loss at the site of injury and areas cephalad and caudad. Histopathology revealed evidence of continuing inflammation, with macrophage activation. The EMG data did not demonstrate evidence of a statistically significant treatment effect.
Soil is the cardinal resource for agricultural crops. Healthy soil will produce healthy plants. Since healthy soil is the important goal for the farmers, they need to select the best tillage system to achieve that goal. There are two main types of tillage systems. Conservation tillage (no-tillage farming) uses agricultural machinery that performs a double function; tillage and seed farming simultaneously. In contrast, conventional tillage farming uses multiple agricultural machines to till and seed the soil. The farmers in the northern governorates of Iraq have used the conservation farming system for a long time. However, the farmers who live in the middle and southern governorates in Iraq use conventional tillage farming. Because most of
... Show MoreSub-threshold operation has received a lot of attention in limited performance applications.However, energy optimization of sub-threshold circuits should be performed with the concern of the performance limitation of such circuit. In this paper, a dual size design is proposed for energy minimization of sub-threshold CMOS circuits. The optimal downsizing factor is determined and assigned for some gates on the off-critical paths to minimize the energy at the maximum allowable performance. This assignment is performed using the proposed slack based genetic algorithm which is a heuristic-mixed evolutionary algorithm. Some gates are heuristically assigned to the original and the downsized design based on their slack time determined by static tim
... Show MoreEffective decision-making process is the basis for successfully solving any engineering problem. Many decisions taken in the construction projects differ in their nature due to the complex nature of the construction projects. One of the most crucial decisions that might result in numerous issues over the course of a construction project is the selection of the contractor. This study aims to use the ordinal priority approach (OPA) for the contractor selection process in the construction industry. The proposed model involves two computer programs; the first of these will be used to evaluate the decision-makers/experts in the construction projects, while the second will be used to formul
Diabetes imposes a substantial public health burden; according to the International Diabetes Federation, there were about 3.4 million diabetes related deaths worldwide in 2024, and in Iraq, the Federation reports that one in nine adults lives with diabetes in 2024, with 14,683 adult deaths attributable to diabetes and a total diabetes related health expenditure of 2,078 million United States dollars. The dataset analyzed in this study contains 1,000 records collected in 2020 from two Iraqi teaching hospitals and includes multiple clinical and laboratory measurements with three outcome classes, namely Non diabetic, Pre diabetic, and Diabetic, with a low prevalence of the Pre diabetic class and an imbalanced overall class distribution; the da
... Show MoreWe define L-contraction mapping in the setting of D-metric spaces analogous to L-contraction mappings [1] in complete metric spaces. Also, give a definition for general D- matric spaces.And then prove the existence of fixed point for more general class of mappings in generalized D-metric spaces.
The importance of regional development resides in the provision of aid and other assistance to regions that are less economically developed. The purpose of this research is to identify the development possibilities and resources at the regional level, which can be tapped for the development of secondary cities. This research aims to shed light on the importance of urban planning in creating regional balance and relieving population and service pressure on major cities. The research answers the question relative to how urban planners can work towards the idea of creating development corridors including the cities located within them, whilst focusing more on the regional dimension and the topic of sustainable urbanization. This research assum
... Show More<p>Mobility management protocols are very essential in the new research area of Internet of Things (IoT) as the static attributes of nodes are no longer dominant in the current environment. Proxy MIPv6 (PMIPv6) protocol is a network-based mobility management protocol, where the mobility process is relied on the network entities, named, Mobile Access Gateways (MAGs) and Local Mobility Anchor (LMA). PMIPv6 is considered as the most suitable mobility protocol for WSN as it relieves the sensor nodes from participating in the mobility signaling. However, in PMIPv6, a separate signaling is required for each mobile node (MN) registration, which may increase the network signaling overhead and lead to increase the total handoff latency
... Show MoreIdentification of complex communities in biological networks is a critical and ongoing challenge since lots of network-related problems correspond to the subgraph isomorphism problem known in the literature as NP-hard. Several optimization algorithms have been dedicated and applied to solve this problem. The main challenge regarding the application of optimization algorithms, specifically to handle large-scale complex networks, is their relatively long execution time. Thus, this paper proposes a parallel extension of the PSO algorithm to detect communities in complex biological networks. The main contribution of this study is summarized in three- fold; Firstly, a modified PSO algorithm with a local search operator is proposed
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