Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with polymorphic expression. B cells have an essential contribution in immune system activation via the production of different cytokines and functioning as potent antigen-presenting cells. Therefore, a drug that particularly targets B cells may represent an ideal therapeutic approach for SLE. Rituximab (RTX), an anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody causing transient B-cell depletion, has been used to manage SLE. This study aims to assess Rituximab effects on lupus nephritis (LN) patients when added to conventional immunosuppressants. Twenty four patients, 15-32 years old, with class III/IV/V LN were involved in this study. All were on steroids before lupus nephritis occurrence. They were

Segmentation of urban features is considered a major research challenge in the fields of photogrammetry and remote sensing. However, the dense datasets now readily available through airborne laser scanning (ALS) offer increased potential for 3D object segmentation. Such potential is further augmented by the availability of full-waveform (FWF) ALS data. FWF ALS has demonstrated enhanced performance in segmentation and classification through the additional physical observables which can be provided alongside standard geometric information. However, use of FWF information is not recommended without prior radiometric calibration, taking into account all parameters affecting the backscatter energy. This paper reports the implementation o

Water covers more than 75% of the earth's surface in the form of the ocean. The ocean investigation is far-fetched because the underwater environment has distinct phenomenal activities. The expansion of human activities inside underwater environments includes environmental monitoring, offshore field exploration, tactical surveillance, scientific data collection, and port security. This led to increased demand for underwater application communication systems. Therefore, the researcher develops many methods for underwater VLC Visible Light Communications. The new technology of blue laser is a type of VLC that has benefits in the application of underwater communications. This research article investigated the benefits of underwater blu

    Terrestrial laser scanners (TLSs) are 3D imaging systems that provide the most powerful 3D representation and practical solutions for various applications. Hence this is due to effective range measurements, 3D point cloud reliability, and rapid acquisition performance. Stonex X300 TOF scanner delivered better certainty in far-range than in close-range measurements due to the high noise level inherent within the data delivered from Time of Flight (TOF) scanning sensors. However, if these errors are manipulated properly using a valid calibration model, more accurate products can be obtained even from very close-range measurements. Therefore, to fill this gap, this research presents a user-oriented target-based calibration routi

In this work, results from an optical technique (laser speckle technique) for measuring surface roughness was done by using statistical properties of speckle pattern from the point of view of computer image texture analysis. Four calibration relationships were used to cover wide range of measurement with the same laser speckle technique. The first one is based on intensity contrast of the speckle, the second is based on analysis of speckle binary image,  the third is on size of speckle pattern spot, and the latest one is based on characterization of the energy feature of the gray level co-occurrence matrices for the speckle pattern. By these calibration relationships surface roughness of an object surface can be evaluated within the

A Photo Dynamic Therapy (PDT) is a technique which is used with Laser to treat many of cancer
tissues. This paper deals with the relatively new therapeutic technique (PDT) with pulsed Nd:glass Laser
which was applied to human soft tissues (Ovary and Kidney tissues), and to the hard tissues (freshly
extracted human teeth), with power density of 280 watt/mm2 and exposure time 330 usec. Different
dyes (Blue, methylene, eosin, and orange) were applied to the area before irradiation to study the effect
of the pigments on the laser interaction with biological tissues. The zone of treatment (Z-necrosis) with
aid of MATLAB was determined. The relationship of zone of treatment with exposure time,
accumulated damage and fracti

Powders for (TiO 2 ) 1−x(MoO 3 ) x composites have been prepared with the use of a dry mix of TiO2 and MoO3 oxides with a variety of compositions (x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 1), then sintering at 1473 K. The materials have been ground and formed into pellets so that they could be used as targets for the pulsed laser deposition (PLD) process, which produced thin flms with a thickness of ≈150 nm on a glass substrate. When MoO3 is added to TiO2 , the crystal size has been observed to decrease from 33.3 to 25.8 nm, yet it after that continued to expand as MoO3 was added. The molybdenum ions were confrmed by XRD patterns, indicating that the substitution regarding Mo+6 ions for Ti +4 ions in TiO2 matrix is what is re