Background: Polymorphisms in the TNF-α gene affect the development and progression of rheumatoid arthritis. Objective: To investigate the associations between (-806 T/C) and (-857 T/C) SNPs with rheumatoid arthritis severity and susceptibility in a sample of Iraqi patients. Methods: A case-control study was conducted in Baghdad, Iraq. Twenty healthy controls and 63 patients confirmed to be newly diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis were included. Those are divided into two groups (patients and controls), and the patients were further subdivided into severe and mild-moderate groups. Samples from those participants were analyzed for clinical and inflammatory parameter measurements. Genotyping by the Sanger method was performed to stu

Reflection cracking in asphalt concrete (AC) overlays is a common form of pavement deterioration that occurs when underlying cracks and joints in the pavement structure propagate through an overlay due to thermal and traffic-induced movement, ultimately degrading the pavement’s lifespan and performance. This study aims to determine how alterations in overlay thickness and temperature conditions, the incorporation of chopped fibers, and the use of geotextiles influence the overlay’s capacity to postpone the occurrence of reflection cracking. To achieve the above objective, a total of 36 prism specimens were prepared and tested using an overlay testing machine (OTM). The variables considered in this study were the thickness of the

Reflection cracking in asphalt concrete (AC) overlays is a common form of pavement deterioration that occurs when underlying cracks and joints in the pavement structure propagate through an overlay due to thermal and traffic-induced movement, ultimately degrading the pavement’s lifespan and performance. This study aims to determine how alterations in overlay thickness and temperature conditions, the incorporation of chopped fibers, and the use of geotextiles influence the overlay’s capacity to postpone the occurrence of reflection cracking. To achieve the above objective, a total of 36 prism specimens were prepared and tested using an overlay testing machine (OTM). The variables considered in this study were the thickness of the

This study is to investigate the possibility of using activated carbon prepared from Iraqi date-pits (ADP) which are produced from palm trees (Phoenix dactylifera L.) as low-cost reactive material in the permeable reactive barrier (PRB) for treating lead (Pb⁺²) from the contaminated groundwater, and then compare the results experimentally with other common reactive materials such as commercial activated carbon (CAC), zeolite pellets (ZP). Factors influencing sorption such as contact time, initial pH of the solution, sorbent dosage, agitation speed, and initial lead concentration has been studied. Two isotherm models were used for the description of sorption data (Langmuir and Freundlich). The maximum lead sorp

The aim of this study is to provide an overview of various models to study drug diffusion for a sustained period into and within the human body. Emphasized the mathematical compartment models using fractional derivative (Caputo model) approach to investigate the change in sustained drug concentration in different compartments of the human body system through the oral route or the intravenous route. Law of mass action, first-order kinetics, and Fick's perfusion principle were used to develop mathematical compartment models representing sustained drug diffusion throughout the human body. To adequately predict the sustained drug diffusion into various compartments of the human body, consider fractional derivative (Caputo model) to investiga

This study examines the analysis of the contents of the international public relations campaign in confronting the Covid-19 virus, which was taken from the (Your Health is a Trust) campaign for the World Health Organization, Iraq office.The research problem revolves around a main question that is, what are the axes of the campaign (Your Health is a Trust) established by the World Health Organization (Iraq office) in the prevention of Covid 19 virus?From this main question, several sub-questions emerged that this study answered on their Facebook page, and the communication activities of the Covid-19 awareness campaign. In the content analysis form, as this form included a number of main themes and main categoriesthat were adopted in analyzin

Face Identification system is an active research area in these years. However, the accuracy and its dependency in real life systems are still questionable. Earlier research in face identification systems demonstrated that LBP based face recognition systems are preferred than others and give adequate accuracy. It is robust against illumination changes and considered as a high-speed algorithm. Performance metrics for such systems are calculated from time delay and accuracy. This paper introduces an improved face recognition system that is build using C++ programming language with the help of OpenCV library. Accuracy can be increased if a filter or combinations of filters are applied to the images. The accuracy increases from 95.5% (without ap