Ovako Working Postures Analyzing System (OWAS) is a widely used method for studying awkward working postures in workplaces. This study with OWAS, analyzed working postures for manual material handling of laminations at stacking workstation for water pump assembly line in Electrical Industrial Company (EICO) / Baghdad. A computer program, WinOWAS, was used for the study. In real life workstation was found that more than 26% of the working postures observed were classified as either AC2 (slightly harmful), AC3 (distinctly harmful). Postures that needed to be corrected soon (AC3) and corresponding tasks, were identified. The most stressful tasks observed were grasping, handling, and positioning of the laminations from workers. The construct

Systemic lupus Erythematosus is an autoimmune disease of unknown aetiology affecting multiple organ system. Reactive nitrogen and oxygen species are claimed to play a role in this disease. However, the potential of Nitrosative/Oxidative Stress to elicit an autoimmune, response remain till now largely unexplored in humans. This study was done to investigate the status and contribution of nitrosative/oxidative stress in Iraqi patients for systemic lupus erythematosus. Blood samples from 19 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and 19 age-and sex- matched apparently healthy controls were evaluated for serum levels of nitrosative/oxidative stress markers including nitric oxide, peroxynitrite and malondialdehyde. Nitric oxide levels were

Background: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative aging disease, with idiopathic PD being most common. Gastrointestinal tract disorders (GITD) and microbiota changes may trigger idiopathic PD. Neurotoxins from microbiota can travel from the gut to the brain via the brain-gut axis (BGA), leading to α-syn protein misfolding and dopaminergic neuron death. Methods: The aim of the current study was to investigate the link between PD and GITD by measuring several biochemical and immunological markers in 142 patients. The biochemical markers measured were vitamins B6, B12, and D, calcium, serotonin, ghrelin, dopamine, and α-syn protein. The immunological markers included transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β), tu

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the leading cause of death worldwide. Certain genetic polymorphisms play an important role in this multifactorial disease, being linked with increased risk of early onset CAD.

Abstract. This work presents a detailed design of a three-jointed tendon-driven robot finger with a cam/pulleys transmission and joint Variable Stiffness Actuator (VSA). The finger motion configuration is obtained by deriving the cam/pulleys transmission profile as a mathematical solution that is then implemented to achieve contact force isotropy on the phalanges. A VSA is proposed, in which three VSAs are designed to act as a muscle in joint space to provide firm grasping. As a mechatronic approach, a suitable type and number of force sensors and actuators are designed to sense the touch, actuate the finger, and tune the VSAs. The torque of the VSAs is controlled utilizing a designed Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) fuzzy controll

      In this paper, the researcher suggested using the Genetic algorithm method to estimate the parameters of the Wiener degradation process,  where it is based on the Wiener process in order to estimate the reliability of high-efficiency products, due to the difficulty of estimating the reliability of them using traditional techniques that depend only on the failure times of products. Monte Carlo simulation has been applied for the purpose of proving the efficiency of the proposed method in estimating parameters; it was compared with the method of the maximum likelihood estimation. The results were that the Genetic algorithm method is the best based on the AMSE comparison criterion, then the reliab

 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