Cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) is a widespread, yet often overlooked, parasitic disease caused by the Leishmania protozoan, which is prevalent in numerous countries, including Iraq. This condition is marked by the appearance of skin lesions on various exposed areas of the body. In most old-world regions, sodium stibogluconate (SSG) is the classical widely used drug to treat CL. The progression of skin ulceration is controlled by different inflammatory modulators including cytokines and enzymes. In this study, the possible role of the enzyme Matrix metalloproteinase9 (MMP-9) and its inhibitor Metallopeptidase inhibitor-1 (TIMP-1) as immunological markers was evaluated in CL patients suffering from cutaneous leishmaniasis before and after treatment by sodium stibogluconate. A total of 161 serum samples of newly diagnosed individuals and patients undergoing Pentostam injections were collected from an endemic area of Diyala, east central Iraq. The level of MMP-9 and TIMP-1 was evaluated in the serum of recently diagnosed CL patients and previously diagnosed CL patients who were undergoing five stages of sodium stibogluconate injections. The results have shown that among the study groups, the recently infected individuals who received no treatment showed significantly elevated levels of both MMP-9 (mean: 20.864 ng/ml) and TIMP-1 (mean: 1193.748 ng/ml). Additionally, the concentration of TIMP-1 was significantly raised in the groups undergoing pentostam treatment from injection-1 to injection-4, when compared to the control individuals. The current findings highlight important insights into the studied serum markers to follow up the development of the treatment in cutaneous leishmaniasis patients.
The paper discusses the structural and optical properties of In2O3 and In2O3-SnO2 gas sensor thin films were deposited on glass and silicon substrates and grown by irradiation of assistant microwave on seeded layer nucleated using spin coating technique. The X-ray diffraction revealed a polycrystalline nature of the cubic structure. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) used for morphology analysis that shown the grain size of the prepared thin film is less than 100 nm, surface roughness and root mean square for In2O3 where increased after loading SnO2, this addition is a challenge in gas sensing application. Sensitivity of In2O3 thin film against NO2 toxic gas is 35% at 300oC. Sensing properties were improved after adding Tin Oxide (SnO2) to be mo
... Show MoreA novel demountable shear connector is proposed to link a concrete slab to steel sections in a way that resulting steel-concrete composite floor is demountable, i.e. it can be easily dismantled at the end of its service life. The proposed connectors consist of two parts: the first part is a hollow steel tube with internal threads at its lower end. The second part is a compatible partially threaded bolted stud. After linking the stud to the steel section, the hollow steel tube can be fastened over the threaded stud, which create a complete demountable shear connector. The connector is suitable for use in both composite bridges and buildings, and using cast in-situ slabs, precast solid slabs, or hollow-core precast slabs. A series of push-off
... Show MoreGeologic modeling is the art of constructing a structural and stratigraphic model of a reservoir from analyses and interpretations of seismic data, log data, core data, etc. [1].
A static reservoir model typically involves four main stages, these stages are Structural modeling, Stratigraphic modeling, Lithological modeling and Petrophysical modeling [2].
Ismail field is exploration structure, located in the north Iraq, about 55 km north-west of Kirkuk city, to the north-west of the Bai Hassan field, the distance between the Bai Hassan field and Ismael field is about one kilometer [3].
Tertiary period reservoir sequences (Main Limestone), which comprise many economica
... Show MoreDiesel engine oil was subjected to thermal oxidization (TO) for six periods of time (0 h, 24 h, 48 h, 72 h, 96 h, and 120 h) and was subsequently characterized by terahertz time domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS). The THz refractive index generally increased with oxidation time. The measurement method illustrated the potential of THz-TDS when a fixed setup with a single cuvette is used. A future miniaturized setup installed in an engine would be an example of a fixed setup. For the refractive index, there were highly significant differences among the oxidation times across most of the 0.3–1.7 THz range.
Image compression is a serious issue in computer storage and transmission, that simply makes efficient use of redundancy embedded within an image itself; in addition, it may exploit human vision or perception limitations to reduce the imperceivable information Polynomial coding is a modern image compression technique based on modelling concept to remove the spatial redundancy embedded within the image effectively that composed of two parts, the mathematical model and the residual. In this paper, two stages proposed technqies adopted, that starts by utilizing the lossy predictor model along with multiresolution base and thresholding techniques corresponding to first stage. Latter by incorporating the near lossless com
... Show MoreImage classification is the process of finding common features in images from various classes and applying them to categorize and label them. The main problem of the image classification process is the abundance of images, the high complexity of the data, and the shortage of labeled data, presenting the key obstacles in image classification. The cornerstone of image classification is evaluating the convolutional features retrieved from deep learning models and training them with machine learning classifiers. This study proposes a new approach of “hybrid learning” by combining deep learning with machine learning for image classification based on convolutional feature extraction using the VGG-16 deep learning model and seven class
... Show MoreIn this work, new Schiff bases of quinazolinone derivatives (Q1-Q5) were synthesized from methyl anthranilate. The synthesis involved three steps. In the first step, methyl anthranilate was reacted with isothiocyanatobenzene, producing the thiourea derivative K1. The second step entailed reacting K1 with hydrazine hydrate, synthesizing 3-amino-2-(phenylamino) quinazolin-4(3H)-one (K2). The third step involved reaction of K2 with various aromatic aldehydes, yielding the Schiff bases derivatives Q1-Q5. The chemical structures of these compounds were identified by FT-IR,1H NMR and 13C NMR spectroscopy. The newly synthesized derivatives (Q1-Q5) were subjected to rigorous evaluation to assess their efficacy as corrosion inhibitors for ca
... Show MoreTwo dimensional meso-scale concrete modeling was used in finite element analysis of plain concrete beam subjected to bending. The plane stress 4-noded quadrilateral elements were utilized to model coarse aggregate, cement mortar. The effect of aggregate fraction distribution, and pores percent of the total area – resulting from air voids entrapped in concrete during placement on the behavior of plain concrete beam in flexural was detected. Aggregate size fractions were randomly distributed across the profile area of the beam. Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) was employed to treat the discontinuities problems result from double phases of concrete and cracking that faced during the finite element analysis of concrete beam. Crac
... Show MoreIn recent years, the migration of the computational workload to computational clouds has attracted intruders to target and exploit cloud networks internally and externally. The investigation of such hazardous network attacks in the cloud network requires comprehensive network forensics methods (NFM) to identify the source of the attack. However, cloud computing lacks NFM to identify the network attacks that affect various cloud resources by disseminating through cloud networks. In this paper, the study is motivated by the need to find the applicability of current (C-NFMs) for cloud networks of the cloud computing. The applicability is evaluated based on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) to outlook the cloud network. T
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