chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common respiratory disease with episodes of exacerbation. Variable factors including infectious pathogen can predispose for this exacerbation. The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of intestinal protozoa in COPD exacerbation. A total of 56 patients with COPD were included in this study. Patients were categorized into two groups based on the frequency of exacerbation during the last 6 months: those with ≤1 exacerbation (32 patients) and those with ≥2 exacerbations (24 patients). Stool specimens from each patient were collected two times (one week interval) examined for intestinal parasite. In univariate analysis, rural residence and parasitic infection were more common among patients with frequent exacerbation (45.83% and 33.33%, respectively) than patients with non-frequent exacerbation (18.75% and 9.38%, respectively) with significant differences. However, in multivariate analysis, only body mass index >25 kg/m2 (OR=4.59, 95%CI=1.18-17.86, P=0.028) and parasitic infection (OR=5.51, 95%CI=1.01-30.18, P=0.049) were independently associated with COPD exacerbation. These data indicate a significant association between frequent COPD exacerbation and infection with some intestinal protozoa. However, the cause-effect relationship is debatable.
A New Spectrophotometric Methods are improved for determination Metronidazole (MTZ) and Metronidazolebenzoate (MTZB) depending on1STand 2nd derivative spectrum of the two drugs by using ethanol as a solvent. Many techniques were proportionated with concentration (peak high to base line, peak to peak and peak area). The linearity of the methodsranged between(1-25µg.ml-1) is obtained. The results were precise and accurate throw RSD% were between (0.041-0.751%) and (0.0331-0.452%), Rec% values between (97.78, 101.87%) and (98.033-102.39%) while the LOD between (0.051-0.231 µg.ml-1) and (0.074-1.04 µg.ml-1) and LOQ between (0.170-0.770µg.ml-1) and (0.074-0.313 µg.ml-1) of (MTZ) and of (MTZB) respectively. These Methods were successfully ap
... Show MoreTwo- dimensional numerical simulations are carried out to study the elements of observing a Dirac point source and a Dirac binary system. The essential features of this simulation are demonstrated in terms of the point spread function and the modulation transfer function. Two mathematical equations have been extracted to present, firstly the relationship between the radius of optical telescope and the distance between the central frequency and cut-off frequency of the optical telescope, secondly the relationship between the radius of the optical telescope and the average frequency components of the modulation transfer function.
Background: Pregnancy is a stressful state of increased inflammatory activity, and pregnancy – associated hormone changes can influence periodontal tissues, these inflammatory activity lead to production of inflammatory mediators. Interleukin 1 beta (IL-1β) is a potent pro-inflammatory cytokines that is consistently associated with periodontal diseases. This study was designed to determine the periodontal health status and detect the serum level of IL-1β in the healthy pregnant women at first, second and third trimester and compare it with healthy non pregnant women, and determine its correlation with different clinical periodontal parameters. M
... Show MoreAn experimental model is used to simulate the loss of soil lateral confinement due to excavation nearby an individual axially loaded pile. The effects of various parameters, such as the horizontal distance of excavation, depth of excavation and pile slenderness ratios are investigated. The experimental analysis results showed the effect of excavation is more remarkable as the horizontal distance of excavation becomes closer to the pile than half pile length. The effect of excavation diminishes gradually as the horizontal distance increases beyond that distance for all the investigated pile slenderness ratios and depths of excavation. The pile head deflection, settlement and bending moments along pile increase with decreasing horizontal d
... Show MoreTraffic management at road intersections is a complex requirement that has been an important topic of research and discussion. Solutions have been primarily focused on using vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Key issues in VANETs are high mobility, restriction of road setup, frequent topology variations, failed network links, and timely communication of data, which make the routing of packets to a particular destination problematic. To address these issues, a new dependable routing algorithm is proposed, which utilizes a wireless communication system between vehicles in urban vehicular networks. This routing is position-based, known as the maximum distance on-demand routing algorithm (MDORA). It aims to find an optimal route on a hop-by-ho
... Show MoreThe D.C electrical and thermoelectrically properties of randomly mixed isolator – electrolyte system as (Al/ PVC – LiF/Al) junction consisting of polyvinyl chloride (PVC)resin reinforced with Lithium Fluoride (LiF) powder were studied. A comparison is made the properties of (PVC) material with varying percentage of (LiF) powder (0%, 30%, 50%, 80%)to find out the effect of reinforcement of isolator material. The composites dissolving in 10ml form tettraHaedroflourn (THF) and Solution were the castled in Petri dish and Laved it dry in the air, The out coming Sample were disc - Like shape of a diameter of about 3cm and thickness reneged between (0.01- 0.018) cm . The composites dissolving in 10ml form tettraHaedroflourn (THF) a
... Show MorePrediction of penetration rate (ROP) is important process in optimization of drilling due to its crucial role in lowering drilling operation costs. This process has complex nature due to too many interrelated factors that affected the rate of penetration, which make difficult predicting process. This paper shows a new technique of rate of penetration prediction by using artificial neural network technique. A three layers model composed of two hidden layers and output layer has built by using drilling parameters data extracted from mud logging and wire line log for Alhalfaya oil field. These drilling parameters includes mechanical (WOB, RPM), hydraulic (HIS), and travel transit time (DT). Five data set represented five formations gathered
... Show MoreKE Sharquie, HM Al-Hamamy, AA Noaimi, IA Al-Shawi, Journal of the Saudi Society of Dermatology & Dermatologic Surgery, 2011 - Cited by 9
NeighShrink is an efficient image denoising algorithm based on the discrete wavelet
transform (DWT). Its disadvantage is to use a suboptimal universal threshold and identical
neighbouring window size in all wavelet subbands. Dengwen and Wengang proposed an
improved method, which can determine an optimal threshold and neighbouring window size
for every subband by the Stein’s unbiased risk estimate (SURE). Its denoising performance is
considerably superior to NeighShrink and also outperforms SURE-LET, which is an up-todate
denoising algorithm based on the SURE. In this paper different wavelet transform
families are used with this improved method, the results show that Haar wavelet has the
lowest performance among