Background: Osteoarthritis is a complicated, chronic disorder of cartilage and bone, associated with homeostasis of bio-elements. The current study aims to assess the role of serum progranulin levels among Iraqi patients with knee osteoarthritis. Patients and Methods: The study encompassed 50 patients aged 52.50 ± 3.12 years (25 males and 25 females), admitted to the at the Baghdad Medical City through the period from November 2021 to March 2022. All individuals were identified by physicians in a Rheumatology and Rehabilitation Outpatient Clinic and the clinical data was collected along with the assess¬ment of biochemical parameters. Fasting serum glucose, lipid profile, calcium, magnesium, alkaline phosphatase, vitamin D3, and progranulin levels were determined. Results: All patients in this study had higher levels of serum glucose and dyslipidemia with significant increases (p < 0.05) in alkaline phosphatase and progranulin levels and considerable reduced (p < 0.05) in serum calcium, magnesium, and vitamin D3 as compared to healthy group. Additionally, hypovitaminosis D were appeared in all patients and progranulin levels were (56.30±8.50 ng/mL) vs. (40.45 ± 8.90 ng/mL) in control group with OR and CI= 1.54 (0.97-2.58). Conclusions: Inflammation has an integral role in the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis. Serum vitamin D3 level is considerably low in patients with knee osteoarthritis paralleled to healthy individuals. However, this study demonstrates increased progranulin levels in knee osteoarthritis patients and associates with vitamin D level, disease activity, and inflammation among those patients. Keywords: Knee osteoarthritis, Calcium, Magnesium, Alkaline phosphatase,Vitamin D3, Progranulin.
Face Recognition Systems (FRS) are increasingly targeted by morphing attacks, where facial features of multiple individuals are blended into a synthetic image to deceive biometric verification. This paper proposes an enhanced Siamese Neural Network (SNN)-based system for robust morph detection. The methodology involves four stages. First, a dataset of real and morphed images is generated using StyleGAN, producing high-quality facial images. Second, facial regions are extracted using Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks (R-CNN) to isolate relevant features and eliminate background noise. Third, a Local Binary Pattern-Convolutional Neural Network (LBP-CNN) is used to build a baseline FRS and assess its susceptibility to d
... Show MoreOptical fiber technology is without a doubt one of the most significant phases of the communications revolution and is crucial to our daily lives. Using the free version (2022) of RP Fiber Calculator, the modal properties for optical fibers with core radii (1.5−7.5) μm, core index (1.44−1.48) and cladding index (1.43−1.47) have been determined at a wavelength of 1000 nm. When the fiber core’s radius is larger than its operating wavelength, multimode fibers can be created. The result is a single-mode fiber in all other cases. All of the calculated properties, it has been shown, increase with increasing core radius. The modes’ intensity profiles were displayed.
The interaction of interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICME) with each other and with co-rotating interaction regions (CIR) changes their configuration, dynamics, magnetic field and plasma characteristics and can make space weather forecasting difficult. During the period of March 20–25, 2011, the Solar Terrestrial Relation Observatory (
In the present work, a density functional theory (DFT) calculation to simulate reduced graphene oxide (rGO) hybrid with zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticle's sensitivity to NO2 gas is performed. In comparison with the experiment, DFT calculations give acceptable results to available bond lengths, lattice parameters, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), energy gaps, Gibbs free energy, enthalpy, entropy, etc. to ZnO, rGO, and ZnO/rGO hybrid. ZnO and rGO show n-type and p-type semiconductor behavior, respectively. The formed p-n heterojunction between rGO and ZnO is of the staggering gap type. Results show that rGO increases the sensitivity of ZnO to NO2 gas as they form a hybrid. ZnO/rGO hybrid has a higher number of vacancies that can b
... Show MoreThe research discussed the possibility of adsorption of Brilliant Blue Dye (BBD) from wastewater using 13X zeolite adsorbent, which is considered a byproduct of the production process of potassium carbonate from Iraqi potash raw materials. The 13X zeolite adsorbent was prepared and characterized by X-ray diffraction that showed a clear match with the standard 13X zeolite. The crystallinity rate was 82.15% and the crystal zeolite size was 5.29 nm. The surface area and pore volume of the obtained 13X zeolite were estimated. The prepared 13X zeolite showed the ability to remove BBD contaminant from wastewater at concentrations 5 to 50 ppm and the removal reached 96.60% at the lower pollutant concentration. Adsorption measurements versus tim
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