Background: Periodontitis is an infection attributable to multiple infectious; it causes an interrelated cellular and humoral host immune responses. Recent reports have indicated that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) may contribute to pathogenesis of periodontitis. The HCMV can stimulate the release of cytokines from inflammatory and non-inflammatory cells and weaken the periodontal immune defense. This study aimed to reveal the presence of anti-CMV IgG, and determine the levels of IL‐6 and TNF-α and to correlate the presence of cytomegalovirus (CMV) with cytokines levels. Materials and Methods: Forty patients with chronic periodontitis and 40 healthy control subjects (their age and sex were matched with the patients) were involved

Credit risk assessment has become an important topic in financial risk administration. Fuzzy clustering analysis has been applied in credit scoring. Gustafson-Kessel (GK) algorithm has been utilised to cluster creditworthy customers as against non-creditworthy ones. A good clustering analysis implemented by good Initial Centres of clusters should be selected. To overcome this problem of Gustafson-Kessel (GK) algorithm, we proposed a modified version of Kohonen Network (KN) algorithm to select the initial centres. Utilising similar degree between points to get similarity density, and then by means of maximum density points selecting; the modified Kohonen Network method generate clustering initial centres to get more reasonable clustering res

This study was designed to evaluate the effect of aqueous extract of Arabidopsis thaliana seeds on reducing glucose level for white albino mice. Twenty adults mice were used, divided randomly into four groups (five mice per each group). The first group (normal mice) was administrated with 0.1 ml of distilled water as a control, the second group (normal mice) was administrated with 0.1 ml of the plant extract, whereas the third and fourth groups (diabetic mice) were administrated with single dose of alloxan (150 mg/kg of the body weight) to induce diabetes, and the fourth group was administrated with 0.1 ml of the plant extract for 10 days, then blood glucose level was measured for all of the experimental animals (diabetic and no

The aim of this study was to identify the level of critical thinking skills among fourth-grade middle school students and to determine the performance level of the underhand volleyball pass, with the assumption that there is a positive relationship between critical thinking and skill performance. The study population included 281 students from Basra Preparatory School for Girls under the Second Baghdad Education Directorate for the 2024/2025 academic year, of whom 275 students were intentionally selected as the research sample (97.865% of the population). The experimental procedure involved applying a critical thinking scale and a technical performance test for the underhand pass on 25 students per day over 11 days, from February 9

Background & objective: Difficult intubation remains a risk for patients undergoing general anesthesia (GA) or mechanical ventilation in an intensive care unit (ICU). Macroglossia is a known factor for difficult intubation. But it is not routine to assess the tongue size to predict difficult intubation. Studies are found deficient in comparing usefulness of measuring thyromental distance and the tongue thickness (TT) measured by ultrasonography to estimate difficult intubation. We compared tongue thickness measured by ultrasonography and thyromental distance as a means to anticipate difficult intubation. Methodology: A convenient sample of 60 patients; 32 males and 28 females, who were undergoing elective surgery with GA were i

In the course of generating a library of open-chain epothilones, we discovered a new class of small molecule anticancer agents that has no effect on tubulin but instead kills selected cancer cell lines by harnessing reactive oxygen species in an iron-dependent manner.

A localized stenosis or aneurysm is a discontinuity that presents the pulse wave produced by the contracting heart with a reflection site. However, neither wave speed ( c) in these discontinuities nor the size of reflection in relation to the size of the discontinuity has been adequately studied before. Therefore, the aim of this work is to study the propagation of waves traversing flexible tubes in the presence of aneurysm and stenosis in vitro. We manufactured different sized four stenosis and four aneurysm silicone sections, connected one at a time to a flexible ‘mother’ tube, at the inlet of which a single semi-sinusoidal wave was generated. Pressure and velocity were measured simultaneously 25 cm downstream the inlet of th

Steady conjugate natural convection heat transfers in a two-dimensional enclosure filled with fluid saturated porous medium is studied numerically. The two vertical boundaries of the enclosure are kept isothermally at same temperature, the horizontal upper wall is adiabatic, and the horizontal lower wall is partially heated. The Darcy extended Brinkman Forcheimer model is used as the momentum equation and Ansys Fluent software is utilized to solve the governing equations. Rayleigh number (1.38 ≤ Ra ≤ 2.32), Darcy number (3.9 * 10-8), the ratio of conjugate wall thickness to its height (0.025 ≤ W ≤ 0.1), heater length to the bottom wall ratio (1/4 ≤  ≤ 3/4) and inclination angle (0°, 30° and 60°) are the main consid