Objectives: Dickkopf-1 (DKK-1) is WNT/b-catenin pathway antagonist which plays a detrimental role in the development of diabetic retinopathy (DR). This research aimed to assess serum DKK-1 levels in diabetic patients who have and have not developed DR and, compare them with the control subjects finding out whether we can use it as an indicator for DR early diagnosis and to find out which one of the widely used two groups of antidiabetic treatments had the greater effect on this biomarker and hence on the progression of DR. Methods: The study participants were divided into two subgroups: First, 70 patients (36 male, 34 female) with type 2 diabetes mellitus, among them 35 patients diagnosed with DR and 35 with no evidence of DR, and s

 The research has been based on two main variables (information and communication technology) and the quality of blended education (physical and electronic), aiming to reveal the relationship between four dimensions (physical devices, software, databases, communication networks) and the elements of education represented by (the teacher, the student, the teaching process, curriculum).  The methodology and post-analysis-based research were conducted at the Technical College of Management / Baghdad through polling the opinions of a random sample that included (80) teachers out of (86) and the number of students (276) representing a random sample from all departments of the college (for the morning study) out of (3500) stud

Background: Tap waters play an important role in fulfilling the people needs for drinking and domestic purposes. Contaminate the tap water with different pollutants has become an issue of great concern for 90% of people who are depended on the tap water as the main source of drinking. Pollutants can make their way easily into the delivering pipes which suffer from the leaking resulting in decreasing the quality of water. Objective: Therefore, assess the water quality for drinking purpose by calculating the water quality index is an important tool to ascertain whether the water is suitable for human consumption or not. Methods: In the present work, the water quality of the Al-Salam, western region of Baghdad city, Iraq was investigated for 7

The free piston engine linear generator (FPELG) is a simple engine structure with few components, making it a promising power generation system. However, because the engine works without a crankshaft, the handling of the piston motion control (PMC) is the main challenge influencing the stability and performance of FPELGs. In this article, the optimal operating parameters of FPELG for maximising engine performance and reducing exhaust gas emissions were studied. Moreover, the influence of adding hydrogen (H2) to compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel on FPELG performance was investigated. The influence of operating parameters on in-cylinder pressure was also analysed. The single-piston FPELG fuelled by CNG blended with H2 was used to run the expe

As we live in the era of the fourth technological revolution, it has become necessary to use artificial intelligence to generate electric power through sustainable solar energy, especially in Iraq and what it has gone through in terms of crises and what it suffers from a severe shortage of electric power because of the wars and calamities it went through. During that period of time, its impact is still evident in all aspects of daily life experienced by Iraqis because of the remnants of wars, siege, terrorism, wrong policies ruling before and later, regional interventions and their consequences, such as the destruction of electric power stations and the population increase, which must be followed by an increase in electric power stations,

Shadow detection and removal is an important task when dealing with color outdoor images. Shadows are generated by a local and relative absence of light. Shadows are, first of all, a local decrease in the amount of light that reaches a surface. Secondly, they are a local change in the amount of light rejected by a surface toward the observer. Most shadow detection and segmentation methods are based on image analysis. However, some factors will affect the detection result due to the complexity of the circumstances. In this paper a method of segmentation test present to detect shadows from an image and a function concept is used to remove the shadow from an image.

The penalized least square method is a popular method to deal with high dimensional data ,where  the number of explanatory variables is large than the sample size . The properties of  penalized least square method are given high prediction accuracy and making estimation and variables selection

 At once. The penalized least square method gives a sparse model ,that meaning a model with small variables so that can be interpreted easily .The penalized least square is not robust ,that means very sensitive to the presence of outlying observation , to deal with this problem, we can used a robust loss function to get the robust penalized least square method ,and get robust penalized estimator and

Water/oil emulsion is considered as the most refractory mixture to separate because of the interference of the two immiscible liquids, water and oil. This research presents a study of dewatering of water / kerosene emulsion using hydrocyclone. The effects of factors such as: feed flow rate (3, 5, 7, 9, and 11 L/min), inlet water concentration of the emulsion (5%, 7.5%, 10%, 12.5%, and 15% by volume), and split ratio (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9) on the separation efficiency and pressure drop were studied. Dimensional analysis using Pi theorem was applied for the first time to model the hydrocyclone based on the experimental data. It was shown that the maximum separation efficiency; at split ratio 0.1, was 94.3% at 10% co

Diabetes is one of the increasing chronic diseases, affecting millions of people around the earth. Diabetes diagnosis, its prediction, proper cure, and management are compulsory. Machine learning-based prediction techniques for diabetes data analysis can help in the early detection and prediction of the disease and its consequences such as hypo/hyperglycemia. In this paper, we explored the diabetes dataset collected from the medical records of one thousand Iraqi patients. We applied three classifiers, the multilayer perceptron, the KNN and the Random Forest. We involved two experiments: the first experiment used all 12 features of the dataset. The Random Forest outperforms others with 98.8% accuracy. The second experiment used only five att