Introduction: Although it is discouraged, community pharmacy customers can obtain oral corticosteroids (OCSs) without prescriptions from some community pharmacies in Iraq. Medication abuse is defined as the use of medication for non-medical reasons. Objectives: The study aimed to determine demographics, beliefs, and perceptions associated with the abuse of oral corticosteroids for non-illness reasons among community pharmacy customers. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in fall 2018 in four provinces in Iraq. Customers of 19 community pharmacies asking for OCSs for themselves without a prescription were administered a paper survey. This study used the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) to measure the relationship between the motivational factors and the abuse of OCSs. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to evaluate the relationships between the use of OCSs for non-illness and six TRA factors: Normative belief, behavioral belief, evaluation of the behavior, motivation to comply, subjective norms and attitude toward behavior. Results: The study enrolled 141 participants (98 women and 43 men) taking asking for OCSs without prescription. Dexamethasone was the most commonly used OCSs (59.6%). Friends were the primary recommenders for corticosteroids abuse (28.4%). The main reasons for using OCSs were to increase appetite and gain weight (53.9 %). Approximately one-third (36.2 %) of the participants gained weight after using OCSs. The regression analysis of the TRA variables showed two factors were significantly related to the abuse of OCSs. Age had a significant inverse relationship with the abuse of OCSs and the "good appearance" belief had a significant positive association with OCS abuse. Conclusion: Some Iraqi community pharmacy customers use non-prescribed oral corticosteroids to increase appetite and gain weight. Improve body appearance represents the dominant incentive that urges people to use OCSs without prescription. Health officials and healthcare practitioners need to promote people's awareness about the risks of misusing OCSs through education programs and advertisements in public health settings, media, and social media. Article Type: Original Research
This study aims to demonstrate the role of artificial intelligence and metaverse techniques, mainly logistical Regression, in reducing earnings management in Iraqi private banks. Synthetic intelligence approaches have shown the capability to detect irregularities in financial statements and mitigate the practice of earnings management. In contrast, many privately owned banks in Iraq historically relied on manual processes involving pen and paper for recording and posting financial information in their accounting records. However, the banking sector in Iraq has undergone technological advancements, leading to the Automation of most banking operations. Conventional audit techniques have become outdated due to factors such as the accuracy of d
... Show MoreWater scarcity is one of the most important problems facing humanity in various fields such as economics, industry, agriculture, and tourism. This may push people to use low-quality water like industrial-wastewater. The application of some chemical compounds to get rid of heavy metals such as cadmium is an environmentally harmful approach. It is well-known that heavy metals as cadmium may induce harmful problems when present in water and invade to soil, plants and food chain of a human being. In this case, man will be forced to use the low quality water in irrigation. Application of natural materials instead of chemicals to remove cadmium from polluted water is an environmental friendly approach. Attention was drawn in this research wor
... Show MoreThe rotor dynamics generally deals with vibration of rotating structures. For designing rotors of a high speeds, basically its important to take into account the rotor dynamics characteristics. The modeling features for rotor and bearings support flexibility are described in this paper, by taking these characteristics of rotor dynamics features into standard Finite Element Approach (FEA) model. Transient and harmonic analysis procedures have been found by ANSYS, the idea has been presented to deal with critical speed calculation. This papers shows how elements BEAM188 and COMBI214 are used to represent the shaft and bearings, the dynamic stiffness and damping coefficients of journal bearings as a matrices have been found
... Show MoreThe Hopfield network is one of the easiest types, and its architecture is such that each neuron in the network connects to the other, thus called a fully connected neural network. In addition, this type is considered auto-associative memory, because the network returns the pattern immediately upon recognition, this network has many limitations, including memory capacity, discrepancy, orthogonally between patterns, weight symmetry, and local minimum. This paper proposes a new strategy for designing Hopfield based on XOR operation; A new strategy is proposed to solve these limitations by suggesting a new algorithm in the Hopfield network design, this strategy will increase the performance of Hopfield by modifying the architecture of t
... Show MoreThe current research seeks to identify the impact of Barman's model on acquisition of the concepts of jurisprudence of worship among students of the departments of Qur'anic sciences. To achieve the research objectives, the researcher relied on the experimental method through a design with partial control by relying on two experimental groups receiving teaching by using the Barman model and a control group receives teaching through the normal method. After applying the experiment, the study reached the following results: Students of the Department of Qur’anic Sciences in general need educational programs linked to the curriculum and built on scientific foundations, according to their needs and problems (psychological, cognitive, and soc
... Show MoreIn light of today's business world, who faces challenges and intense competition as a result of the rapid evolution of technical and informational, organizations had to respond to variables through the adoption of modern management techniques that reduce the effects of risks and activating the role of the internal control system in order to contribute to the early detection of risks and reduce the negative results expected .The research is to address the problem faced by organizations which still follow the traditional methods in the control activities, and the lack of knowledge of the management and their staff of the importance of the existence of risk management and internal control system takes into account these risks, and the limit
... Show MoreAbstract
This study concerned of scientific analysis of sociological directions
among Iraqi scholars graduated before 1960. These directions was divided
between heritage, conflict, critical and symbolic interaction. It is important to
mention that Al-Wardi scholar tried to build a theory in Sociology focused on
the image of Iraqi personality through historical approach used by Arabian
scholar Ibn-Khaldon.
The research illustrated that the theory of constraints is "A group of concepts and basics that aim at helping the management in order to determine the difficulties and how to overcome these difficulties through determining the necessary change and how these change can be done efficiently and effectively ".
The research showed that the theory of constraint including its tools calls for magnifying throughput, constricting the product cycle , determining the optimal production mix , utilization of scare resources and canceling the idle time , that achieving throughput increasing then increasing profit .
Moreov
... Show MorePregnancy-associated anemia is a widespread condition that can have varying impacts on both the mother and the developing fetus, depending on the level of hemoglobin in the mother’s blood and the stage of pregnancy at which the anemia occurs. In Iraq, 27% of all registered thalassemia cases are thalassemia minor. Pregnancy may aggravate mild undiagnosed thalassemia early in pregnancy. The objective of the study was to access the prevalence of undetected thalassemia minor in primigravida women who received prenatal care before 20 weeks and to compare the demographic and socioeconomic characteristic features between women with iron-deficiency anemia (IDA) and those without any anemia. A to