Developing an efficient algorithm for automated Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) segmentation to characterize tumor abnormalities in an accurate and reproducible manner is ever demanding. This paper presents an overview of the recent development and challenges of the energy minimizing active contour segmentation model called snake for the MRI. This model is successfully used in contour detection for object recognition, computer vision and graphics as well as biomedical image processing including X-ray, MRI and Ultrasound images. Snakes being deformable well-defined curves in the image domain can move under the influence of internal forces and external forces are subsequently derived from the image data. We underscore a critical appraisal

Teresa Fitzpatrick presents a connection between oppressed women and the plant of Wisteria in gothic fiction in her article “Wisteria: A Female Eco-Gothic Metaphor in American Fiction Through the Ages.” The connection between women and nature is common in literature as women are usually compared to the beauty or ferocity of flowers, rivers, or natural phenomena in general. The connection extends to the architecture and sort of plants that appear in gothic literature. Gothic novels have routinely been connected to the secrets and life stories of women who cannot have the liberty to live or share them outside their homes. A fearful house with a prisoned person, ghost, or a secret is mostly normally found in gothic writing. Women have exce

The rate of gas induction was measured in gas-inducing type mechanically agitated contactors provided with two impellers. A reactor of 0.5 m i.d. was used with a working capacity of 60 liters of liquid. Tap water was used as the liquid phase, and air was used as the gas phase. The bioreactor mixing system consists of two equal diameter stirrers; the top impeller is shrouded-disk/curved-blade turbine with six evacuated bending blades, while the bottom impeller was disk turbine. The impeller speed was varied in the range of 50 to 800 rpm. The ratio of impeller diameter to tank diameter (D/T) and the submergence (S) of upper impeller from the top were varied. The effects of clearance of lower impeller from the tank bottom (C₂) an

Background: Clinicians and investigators consider the normal range of bowel habit and frequency as between 3 to 21 motions per week . Stool frequency out side the normal range may be unusual but may not be abnormal in the sense of a disease . And according to the consistency, the normal stool ranges from porridge like to hard and pellety .Objectives: To establish a basic data about the bowel habits (consistency and frequency) in a sample of healthy Iraqi population; in addition to learn about their definition of constipation and diarrhea.Methods: Prospective study from Jan 2000- Jun 2000 at Al-Yarmouk teaching hospital, Baghdad. Questionnaires were distributed to 950 healthy persons of different age group .The questionnaire included: Det

ABSTRACT Planetary Nebulae (PN) distances represent the fundamental parameter for the determination the physical properties of the central star of PN. In this paper the distances scale to Planetary Nebulae in the Galactic bulge were calculated re- lated to previous distances scales. The proposed distance scale was done by recalibrated the previous distance scale technique CKS/D82. This scale limited for nearby PN (D ≤ 3.5 kpc), so the surface fluxes less than other distance scales. With these criteria the results showed that the proposed distance scale is more accurate than other scales related to the observations for adopted sample of PN distances, also the limit of ionized radius (Rio) for all both optically thick and optically thin in