Background: Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease characterized by joint inflammation, involvement of exocrine salivary and lacrimal glands may occur as extra-articular mani¬festations in this disease. This study aimed to provide evidence of altered in function and composition of salivary gland in patients with rheumatoid arthritis by determine salivary flow rate and some biochemical parameters(total protein, amylase, peroxidase) and to investigate the relationship between disease activity and changes in function and composition of salivary gland. Materials and Methods: Fifty five patients with RA (7 males and 48 females) were enrolled in this study with age range (20-69) years. The patients were separated into two groups in proportion to their salivation: normal salivation group (37) and hypo salivation group (18). Thirty five (9 male and 26 female) apparently healthy volunteers were also participated in the study. Three ml of unstimulated saliva was collected from all patients and control to determine salivary flow rate on one hand and salivary total protein, α-amylase and peroxidase by colorimetric method on other hand. Results:Resultsshowed that there is highly significant decrease (P< 0.01; p< 0.001) in the median salivary levels of (flow rate, total protein, α-amylase and peroxidase) among RA patients when compared to control. There was highly significant reduction (P< 0.01) in median salivary levels of flow rate, total protein, α-amylase and peroxidase in two study groups (normal salivation and hypo salivation) as compared to that in control group. Also the levels of all these parameters (sialometry and sialochemistry) were significantly decrease (P =0.00) in RA patients with hypo salivation as compared to that in patients with normal salivation. There was strong positive correlation between total protein and salivary flow rate (r= 0.651, P=0.000), in one hand, and on the other hand, there was strong positive correlation between α-amylase and both salivary flow rate (r=623, P= 0.000) and total protein r=658, P=0.000). Conclusion: These findings indicate that the changes in salivary composition may represent involvement of salivary glands in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Aggregate production planning (APP) is one of the most significant and complicated problems in production planning and aim to set overall production levels for each product category to meet fluctuating or uncertain demand in future. and to set decision concerning hiring, firing, overtime, subcontract, carrying inventory level. In this paper, we present a simulated annealing (SA) for multi-objective linear programming to solve APP. SA is considered to be a good tool for imprecise optimization problems. The proposed model minimizes total production and workforce costs. In this study, the proposed SA is compared with particle swarm optimization (PSO). The results show that the proposed SA is effective in reducing total production costs and req
... Show MoreThe tentative list of the biodiversity (plants and vertebrates) of Bahr Al-Najaf depression is found to comprise 104 vertebrate species including 2 fishes, 14 reptiles, 73 resident and migratory birds and 15 mammals. The flora consists of 31 species, mainly of plants well adapted to desert conditions that dominate the area, besides few examples of water plants. The salinity was found, through chemical analysis of the lake water, to be of high value which reduces the diversity of aquatic animal and plant diversity.
Assessment should give more attention on the learning achievement of the curriculum. Portfolio- based learning assessment (PBLA) is utilized in language learning materials recently .It is assessment tools to test the learners’ learning for instance open-ended problem solving, and creative and critical thinking, imaginative, reflective, have the capacity to apply their information in new issues, and to express oral and composing. This paper aims to discover the impact of utilizing (PBLA) on students’ performance at College of Education (Ibn –Rushd) in English Department the third stage. To fulfill the aim, a sample of the study is (64) EFL students of two groups. The study used a test and an instrument design .The test group ut
... Show MoreThe present investigation aims to study the effect of heat treatment by quenching in different quenching media (salt water, water and oil) following by tempering on wear resistance of EN25 steel. EN25 steel is an alloy of medium carbon low alloy steel which is used for many applications requiring high tensile strength and wear resistance such as connecting rods, adapters and in power sectors extensively. The specimens are machined to 20 mm in length and 10 mm in diameter. This study is done by two stages: The first stage is done by austenitizing EN25 steel to 850 for 1 hr by quenching the specimens in three different quenching media and then tempered at 300 in air. While the second stage is performed by wear
... Show MoreA new pavement technology has been developed in Highway engineering: asphalt pavement production is less susceptible to oxidation and the consequent damages. The warm mix asphalt (WMA) is produced at a temperature of about (10-40) oC lower than the hot asphalt paving. This is done using one of the methods of producing a WMA. Although WMA's performance is rather good, according to previous studies, as it is less susceptible to oxidation, it is possible to modify some of its properties using different materials, including polymers. Waste tires of vehicles are one of the types of polymers because of their flexible properties. The production of HMA, WMA, and WMA modified with proportions of (1, 1.5, and 2%) of rub
... Show MoreFunctionalized-multi wall carbon nanotubes (F-MWCNTs) and functionalized-single wall carbon nanotubes (F-SWCNTs) were well enhanced using CoO Nanoparticles. The sensor device consisted of a film of sensitive material (F-MWCNTs/CoONPs) and (F-SWCNTs/CoO NPs) deposited by drop- casting on an n-type porous silicon substrate. The two sensors perform high sensitivity to NO2 gas at room temperatures. The analysis indicated that the (F-MWCNTs/CoONPs) have a better performance than (F-SWCNTs/CoONPs). The F-SWCNTs/CoONPs gas sensor shows high sensitivity (19.1 %) at RT with response time 17 sec, while F-MWCNTs/CoONPs gas sensor show better sensitivity (39 %) at RT with response time 13 sec. The device shows a very reproducible sensor p
... Show MoreOften phenomena suffer from disturbances in their data as well as the difficulty of formulation, especially with a lack of clarity in the response, or the large number of essential differences plaguing the experimental units that have been taking this data from them. Thus emerged the need to include an estimation method implicit rating of these experimental units using the method of discrimination or create blocks for each item of these experimental units in the hope of controlling their responses and make it more homogeneous. Because of the development in the field of computers and taking the principle of the integration of sciences it has been found that modern algorithms used in the field of Computer Science genetic algorithm or ant colo
... Show MoreThe -multiple mixing ratios of γ-transitions from levels of populated in the are calculated in the present work by using the a2-ratio methods. We used the experimental coefficient (a2) for two γ-transitions from the same initial state, the statistical tensor, which is related to the a2-coefficient would be the same for the two transitions. This method was used in a previous work for pure transitions or which can be considered pure. In these cases the multiple mixing ratios for the second transition ( ) equal zero, but in our work we applied this method for mixed γ-transitions and then the multiple mixing ratio ( ) is known for one transition. Then we calculate the ( ) value and versareversa. The weight average of the -values calcu
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