Automatic Programming Assessment (APA) has been gaining lots of attention among researchers mainly to support automated grading and marking of students’ programming assignments or exercises systematically. APA is commonly identified as a method that can enhance accuracy, efficiency and consistency as well as providing instant feedback on students’ programming solutions. In achieving APA, test data generation process is very important so as to perform a dynamic testing on students’ assignment. In software testing field, many researches that focus on test data generation have demonstrated the successful of adoption of Meta-Heuristic Search Techniques (MHST) so as to enhance the procedure of deriving adequate test data for efficient t

Background: The rhizome of ginger is used in cooking and for medicinal purposes such as anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. The aims of the study were to test the effect of ethanolic extract of ginger on growth, adherence and acidogenicity of mutans streptococci in comparison to chlorhexidine gluconate 0.2% and de-ionized water. Materials and methods: From saliva often volunteers (dental students 20-22 years); mutans streptococci was isolated, purified and diagnosed according to morphological characteristic and biochemical tests. Ginger was powdered and extracted, different concentrations of ginger extract were prepared. Chlorhexidine gluconate 0.2% used as a control positive; while de-ionized water was used as a

In this work, the effect of aluminum (Al) dust particles on the DC discharge plasma properties in argon was investigated. A magnetron is placed behind the cathode at different pressures and with varying amounts of Al. The plasma temperature (Te) and density (ne) were calculated using the Boltzmann equation and Stark broadening phenomena, which are considered the most important plasma variables through which the other plasma parameters were calculated. The measurements showed that the emission intensity decreases with increasing pressure from 0.06 to 0.4 Torr, and it slightly decreases with the addition of the NPs. The calculations showed that the ne increased and Te decreased with pressure. Both Te and ne were reduced by increasing

Background: Ankylosing spondylitis is a chronic inflammatory disease that mostly involves the spine and sacroiliac joints. It is associated with a decreased quality of life. Biological medicines such as infliximab and its biosimilar are the mainstay treatments for active ankylosing spondylitis.

Objective: The study objective was to conduct a pharmacoeconomic study comparing the cost-effectiveness of the reference infliximab with its biosimilar in ankylosing spondylitis patients visiting public hospitals.

Subjects and Method: This is a two-center pharmacoeconomic study performed at two large teaching governmental hospitals in Baghdad, Iraq, which s

This paper tackles with principal component analysis method (PCA ) to dimensionality reduction in the case of linear combinations to digital image processing and analysis. The PCA is statistical technique that shrinkages a multivariate data set consisting of inter-correlated variables into a data set consisting of variables that are uncorrelated linear combination, while ensuring the least possible loss of useful information. This method was applied to a group of satellite images of a certain area in the province of Basra, which represents the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Shatt al-Arab in the province of Basra.

The security of message information has drawn more attention nowadays, so; cryptography has been used extensively. This research aims to generate secured cipher keys from retina information to increase the level of security. The proposed technique utilizes cryptography based on retina information. The main contribution is the original procedure used to generate three types of keys in one system from the retina vessel's end position and improve the technique of three systems, each with one key. The distances between the center of the diagonals of the retina image and the retina vessel's end (diagonal center-end (DCE)) represent the first key. The distances between the center of the radius of the retina and the retina vessel's end (ra

In this paper, the theoretical cross section in pre-equilibrium nuclear reaction has been studied for the reaction  at energy 22.4 MeV. Ericson’s formula of partial level density PLD and their corrections (William’s correction and spin correction) have been substituted  in the theoretical cross section and compared with the experimental data for  nucleus. It has been found that the theoretical cross section with one-component PLD from Ericson’s formula when  doesn’t agree with the experimental value and when . There is little agreement only at the high value of energy range with  the experimental cross section. The theoretical cross section that depends on the one-component William's formula and on-component corrected to spi