Tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) antagonists’ therapy are expensive and has a non-responsive rate between 30% to 40% in rheumatoid arthritis patients. Genetic variation plays a vital role in the responsiveness to this type of therapy.The aim of this study is to investigate if the presence of genetic polymorphism in the TNF-α gene promoter region at locations -376 G/A (rs1800750), -806 C/T (rs4248158), and -1031 T/C (rs1799964) affects rheumatoid arthritis patient's tendency to be a non-responder to etanercept.

Eighty RA patients on etanercept (ETN) for at least six months were recruited from the Rheumatology Unit at Baghdad Teaching Hospital. Based on The European League Against Rheumatism response (EULAR) criteria, patient

Survival analysis is widely applied to data that described by the length of time until the occurrence of an event under interest such as death or other important events. The purpose of this paper is to use the dynamic methodology which provides a flexible method, especially in the analysis of discrete survival time, to estimate the effect of covariate variables through time in the survival analysis on dialysis patients with kidney failure until death occurs. Where the estimations process is completely based on the Bayes approach by using two estimation methods: the maximum A Posterior (MAP) involved with Iteratively Weighted Kalman Filter Smoothing (IWKFS) and in combination with the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. While the other

Strengthening of composite beams is highly needed to upgrade the capacities of existing beams. The strengthening methods can be classified as active or passive techniques. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to provide detailed FE simulations for strengthened and unstrengthened steel–concrete composite beams at the sagging and hogging moment regions with and without profiled steel sheeting. The developed models were verified against experimental results from the literature. The verified models were used to present comparisons between the effect of using external post-tensioning and CFRP laminates as strengthening techniques. Applying external post-tensioning at the sagging moment regions is more effective because of the e

Power-electronic converters are essential elements for the effective interconnection of renewable energy sources to the power grid, as well as to include energy storage units, vehicle charging stations, microgrids, etc. Converter models that provide an accurate representation of their wideband operation and interconnection with other active and passive grid components and systems are necessary for reliable steady state and transient analyses during normal or abnormal grid operating conditions. This paper introduces two Laplace domain-based approaches to model buck and boost DC-DC converters for electromagnetic transient studies. The first approach is an analytical one, where the converter is represented by a two-port admittance model via mo

This study examines the factors that affect oral participation of six Arab postgraduate students (two Iraqis, two Jordanians, and two Libyans), namely, three male participants and three female participants. For this purpose, a semi-structured interview was employed. The results showed that female as well male interviewees share some factors that make oral participation in classroom disheartening. These factors include high levels of anxiety, lack of confidence, shyness, and lack of preparation. It was also that there is no difference between male and female interviewees in relation to the factors that make them feel disheartened from oral classroom participation.

Nowadays, people's expression on the Internet is no longer limited to text, especially with the rise of the short video boom, leading to the emergence of a large number of modal data such as text, pictures, audio, and video. Compared to single mode data ,the multi-modal data always contains massive information. The mining process of multi-modal information can help computers to better understand human emotional characteristics. However, because the multi-modal data show obvious dynamic time series features, it is necessary to solve the dynamic correlation problem within a single mode and between different modes in the same application scene during the fusion process. To solve this problem, in this paper, a feature extraction framework of

Isolation of fungi was performed from February to July, 2019. One hundred clinical specimens were collected from King Abdullah Hospital (KAH) Bisha, Saudi Arabia. Samples were collected from twenty patients of different ages (30 - 70 years old) ten males and ten females. The samples were collected from patients with the two types of diabetics. Specimens included blood, hair, nail, oral swabs and skin.  Specimens were inoculated on Sabourauds Dextrose agar containing chloramphenicol. Thirteen fungal species were isolated and identified. The isolated species were: Aspergillus flavus, A. niger, A. terrus, A. nidulans, A. fumigatus, Candida albicans, C. krusei, C. parapsilosis, C. Tropicalis, Curvularia lunata, Fusarium solani, Penicill

   Petrophysical characterization is the most important stage in reservoir management. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate reservoir properties and lithological identification of Nahr Umar Formation in Nasiriya oil field. The available well logs are (sonic, density, neutron, gamma-ray, SP, and resistivity logs). The petrophysical parameters such as the volume of clay, porosity, permeability, water saturation, were computed and interpreted using IP4.4 software. The lithology prediction of Nahr Umar formation was carried out by sonic -density cross plot technique. Nahr Umar Formation was divided into five units based on well logs interpretation and petrophysical Analysis: Nu-1 to Nu-5. The formation lithology is mainly

To verify the influence of magnetic flux on the characteristics of SAE 10W-30 gasoline engine oil when the engine oil is exposed to different magnetic fluxes 0, 6, 9, and 13 Volt. The following oil characteristics were measured: viscosity at 40 and 100 °C, and total acid number (TAN) mg KOH/g. The research was carried out in a completely randomized design with three replications for each treatment under the 5% probability level to compare the means of the treatments. The results of the experiment showed that there were significant differences in the studied properties when the engine oil was exposed to the above magnetic fluxes and, inversely, especially the magnetic flux of 13 Volt, which led to a decrease in the viscosity of the oils at

This study aimed to extraction of essential oil from peppermint leaves by using hydro distillation methods. In the peppermint oil extraction with hydro distillation method is studied the effect of the extraction temperature to the yield of peppermint oil. Besides it also studied the kinetics during the extraction process. Then, 2^nd -order mechanism was adopted in the model of hydro distillation for estimation many parameters such as the initial extraction rate, capacity of extraction and the constant rat of extraction with various temperature. The same model was also used to estimate the activation energy. The results showed a spontaneous process, since the  Gibbs free energy had a value negative sign.