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.
Petroleum is one of the most important substances consumed by man at present times, a major energy source in this century, petroleum oils can cause environmental pollution during various stages of production, transportation, refining and use, petroleum hydrocarbons pollutions ranging from soil, ground water to marine environment, become an inevitable problem in the modern life, current study focused on bioremediation process of hydrocarbons contaminants that remaining in the bottom of gas cylinders and discharged to the soil. Twenty-four bacterial isolates were isolated from contaminated soils all of them gram negative bacteria, bacterial isolates screening to investigate the ability of biodegradation of hydrocarbons, these isolates inocula
... Show MoreThis research is a case study to solve control problems in Al Rasheed edible oil factory fire tube boilers. they have hopes to develop a new control system to manage boilers operation. The suggestion is to use Zelio soft programmable relays instead of the unavailable old control units. Operation philosophy was studied through works of literature, operation manuals, and standards. Programmable logic control relay is proposed as an advanced selection than PLC's. Boilers operation is accompanied by operation risks. many boilers were exploded in Iraq for different reasons. Some problems are attributed to manual operation mistakes. Extensive work was done to understand the operation sequence, emergency shutdown, and faults causing the trips. A c
... Show MoreThere are many diseases that affect the arteries, especially those related to their elasticity and stiffness, and they can be guessed by estimating and calculating the modulus of elasticity. Hence, the accurate calculation of the elastic modulus leads to an accurate assessment of these diseases, especially in their early stages, which can contribute to the treatment of these diseases early. Most of the calculations used the one-dimensional (1D) modulus of elasticity. From a mechanical point of view, the stresses to which the artery is subjected are not one-dimensional, but three-dimensional. Therefore, estimating at least a two-dimensional (2D) modulus of elasticity will necessarily be more accurate. To the knowledge of researchers, there i
... Show MoreThis study focuses on diagnosis of Candida species causing Vulvovaginal Candidiasis using phenotype and genotype analyzing methods, and frequencies of candida species also using Vulvovaginal Candidiasis patients. 130 samples (100 from patients and 30 from non infected women) were collected and cultured on biological media. Identifying the yeasts, initially some phenotypic experiments were carried out such as germ tube, from motion of pseudohyphae and clamydospores in CMA+TW80 medium, API20 candida and CHROMagar Candida. Genomic DNA of all species were extracted and analyzed with PCR and subsequent Polymerase Chain Reaction - Restriction Fragments Length Polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) methods. Frequency of C. albicans, C. krusei, C. tropicalis , C.
... Show MoreA preventing shield for neutrons and gamma rays was designed using alternate layers of water and iron with pre-fixed dimensions in order to study the possibility of attenuating both neutrons and gamma-rays. ANISN CODE was prepared and adapted for the shield calculation using radiation doses calculation: Two groups of cross-section were used for each of neutrons and gamma-rays that rely on the one – dimensional transport equation using discrete ordinate's method, and through transforming cross-section values to values that are independent on the number of groups. The memory size required for the applied code was reduced and the results obtained were in agreement with those of standard acceptable document samples of cross –section, this a
... Show MoreIn this research, annealed nanostructured ZnO catalyst water putrefaction system was built using sun light and different wavelength lasers as stimulating light sources to enhance photocatalytic degradation activity of methylene blue (MB) dye as a model based on interfacial charges transfer. The structural, crystallite size, morphological, particle size, optical properties and degradation ability of annealed nanostructured ZnO were characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and UV-VIS Spectrometer, respectively. XRD results demonstrated a pure crystalline hexagonal wurtzite with crystalline size equal to 23 nm. From AFM results, the average particle size was 79.25nm. All MB samples and MB with annealed nanostr
... Show MoreThe nuclear matter density distributions, elastic electron scattering charge formfactors and root-mean square (rms) proton, charge, neutron and matter radii arestudied for neutron-rich 6,8He and 19C nuclei and proton-rich 8B and 17Ne nuclei. Thelocal scale transformation (LST) are used to improve the performance radial wavefunction of harmonic-oscillator wave function in order to generate the long tailbehavior appeared in matter density distribution at high . A good agreement resultsare obtained for aforementioned quantities in the used model.
In this paper, an intelligent tracking control system of both single- and double-axis Piezoelectric Micropositioner stage is designed using Genetic Algorithms (GAs) method for the optimal Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller tuning parameters. The (GA)-based PID control design approach is a methodology to tune a (PID) controller in an optimal control sense with respect to specified objective function. By using the (GA)-based PID control approach, the high-performance trajectory tracking responses of the Piezoelectric Micropositioner stage can be obtained. The (GA) code was built and the simulation results were obtained using MATLAB environment. The Piezoelectric Micropositioner simulation model with th
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