Background: The gene responsible for encoding the protein of cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated antigen-4 (CTLA-4) has been found to be associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in different ethnic populations. But the association of +49A/G CTLA-4 polymorphism with susceptibility of RA among Iraqi Arab populations has not yet been determined. Methods: One hundred and seventy-eight patients were examined, 67 of them were males (mean age 54.71 ± 10.4 years), while 167 were examined for the control group, of whom 64 were males and the rest were females. CTLA-4 DNA genotyping was carried on to determine the +49 A/G (rs231775) polymorphism using a polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). Enzyme-linked immunosor- bent assay (ELISA) was also applied here to measure the antibodies level for cyclic citrullinated peptides (anti- CCP) and Rheumatoid factor (RF). Results: The frequency of AG and GG genotypes in CTLA-4 + 49 were significantly higher among RA patients in comparing with controls (55.61% vs 42.51%, OR=2.18, 95% CI=1.62–3.79, P=0.003) and (20.22% vs 10.77%, OR = 2.61, 95% CI = 1.31–6.46, P = 0.002) respectively. G allele frequency was also significantly higher among RA cases (52.24% vs. 31.73%, OR = 3.02; 95% CI = 1.61–7.39, P = 0.001). The frequencies of the AA genotype and A allele, however, were significantly lower in cases than controls (24.15% vs 46.70%, P = 0.001) and (47.75% vs 68.26%, P = 0.001) respectively. Moreover, the levels of Anti-CCP and RF were raised signifi- cantly among RA patients than controls (P = 0.0001), but none of these parameters were correlated with ge- notypes of CTLA-4. Conclusions: Carries of CTLA-4 + 49 AG and GG alleles were at a high risk of developing functional disability of RA, unlike the AA allele carriers.
The current research aims to find out the role of transformational leadership in decision-making wise, to cope with the decline in some of the banking performance indicators as a result of the absence of the modern concept of the leadership of those so-called B (Transformational Leadership) and preventing benefit from the advantages in the banks, and I test the research on a sample of the Iraqi private banks through applied to a sample (77) Mdermvud and Associate Director and Advisor to the Chairman of the Department, the distributors (7) banks, and used the head of the questionnaire as a tool to collect data and information. For the purpose of access to the results, the research sought to test two hypotheses two main hypotheses sub pop
... Show MoreThe current research aims to determine the requirements of Trends of International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 2019) and to find out the extent to which the content of science textbooks for grades (1-4) in the Sultanate of Oman includes the requirements of (TIMSS 2019). Only the Cognitive Process dimension has been considered when conducting the analysis. The study population includes all science books from the first to the fourth grade for the academic year 2021-2022. The study identified and organized the requirements in the study tool, which is a list of requirements of (TIMSS 2019). After confirming its validity and reliability, the analysis was performed, and data were collected and analyzed statistically using frequencies
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This study identified the developing of a range of students' geography learning skills and the change in their attitudes toward fieldwork as a consequence of leaning experiences that occurred within a field trip. The sample of the study consisted of (27) students within a special topic course enrolled in Geography Department at Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia in semester 2, 2018. A range of students' geography learning skills were measured by the skills questionnaire that consisted of 12 geography skills after completing field work. Changes in students' at
... Show MoreThis study aims to derive a sustainable human development index for the Arab countries by using the principal components analysis, which can help in reducing the number of data in the case of multiple variables. This can be relied upon in the interpretation and tracking sustainable human development in the Arab countries in the view of the multiplicity of sustainable human development indicators and its huge data, beside the heterogeneity of countries in a range of characteristics associated with indicators of sustainable human development such as area, population, and economic activity. The study attempted to use the available data to the selected Arab countries for the recent years. This study concluded that a single inde
... Show MoreAbstract
This paper discusses the essence of the developmental process in auditing firms and offices at the world today. This process is focused on how to adopt the audit concepts which is based on Information and Communication Technology (ICT), including the Continuous Auditing (CA) in particular. The purpose of this paper is to design a practical model for the adoption of CA and its requirements according to the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). This model will serve as a road map for manage the change and development in the Iraqi auditing firms and offices. The paper uses the analytical approach in reaching to the target results. We design the logical and systematic relations between the nine variable
... Show MoreIn this research the results of applying Artificial Neural Networks with modified activation function to perform the online and offline identification of four Degrees of Freedom (4-DOF) Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) manipulator robot will be described. The proposed model of identification strategy consists of a feed-forward neural network with a modified activation function that operates in parallel with the SCARA robot model. Feed-Forward Neural Networks (FFNN) which have been trained online and offline have been used, without requiring any previous knowledge about the system to be identified. The activation function that is used in the hidden layer in FFNN is a modified version of the wavelet function. This approach ha
... Show MoreIn this research the results of applying Artificial Neural Networks with modified activation function to
perform the online and offline identification of four Degrees of Freedom (4-DOF) Selective Compliance
Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) manipulator robot will be described. The proposed model of
identification strategy consists of a feed-forward neural network with a modified activation function that
operates in parallel with the SCARA robot model. Feed-Forward Neural Networks (FFNN) which have
been trained online and offline have been used, without requiring any previous knowledge about the
system to be identified. The activation function that is used in the hidden layer in FFNN is a modified
version of the wavelet func
Association rules mining (ARM) is a fundamental and widely used data mining technique to achieve useful information about data. The traditional ARM algorithms are degrading computation efficiency by mining too many association rules which are not appropriate for a given user. Recent research in (ARM) is investigating the use of metaheuristic algorithms which are looking for only a subset of high-quality rules. In this paper, a modified discrete cuckoo search algorithm for association rules mining DCS-ARM is proposed for this purpose. The effectiveness of our algorithm is tested against a set of well-known transactional databases. Results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing metaheuristic methods.
This study was aimed to evaluate the effect of conventional ingredients replacement with alternative ingredients on growth performance, carcass quality, nutrient digestibility and intestinal microbial of broilers. One hundred twenty Cobb500 broiler chicks were randomly assigned to four diets. Corn, soybean meal and fish meal were replaced with rice waste, meat and bone waste and black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) at 0, 10, 30 and 50% to form four treatments. Body weight gain, feed conversion ratio and digestibility of crude protein and fat were improved in broilers fed the replacement diets. Feed intake was not affected by the treatments suggesting that the replacement diets were well accepted by the chicken. Escherichia coli was decre
... Show MoreThe whole world and the Arab world, especially an important part of this international system, is undergoing a radical transformation at all levels. This mosaic of political, economic, social and military relations and alliances, whether based on the special interests of the major Powers or on the basis of mutual interests, The major transformations to social, economic, political and military conflict and these transformations still bear more surprises, at all levels, nothing remains constant, all changed, relations changed and alliances changed and loyalties fell and the principles of the M changed and the spectacular imperial economies collapsed and the will of the masses was no longer fixed.