Background: Several infectious lung diseases often develop in patients with Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), especially during immunosuppressive medication, including disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs). The present study aimed to determine the role of respiratory tract bacterial infection in RA activity. Methods: Blood and sputum samples were collected from 31 patients with RA and 12 healthy subjects as control. The bacterial isolates were isolated and identified in collected sputum by biochemical tests and Vitec 2 system. Results: In the present study, thirty-one patients with RA were compared with 12 healthy subjects. Eight patients with RA were not infected with pathogenic bacteria (RA-NIPB) (25.8%). Twenty-three RA patients wer
... Show MoreConstruction joints serve as interruption points in the concrete placement process, which is necessary because it is often not feasible to pour concrete continuously in many structures. The quantity of concrete that can be poured at a single instance depends on the batching and mixing capacity, as well as the strength of the formwork. An effective construction joint must ensure sufficient flexural and shear continuity across the junction. Many studies investigated the construction joints in the reinforced concrete (RC) normal beams, but there are no studies investigating the effect of construction joints on the behavior of the RC deep beams. This study was prepared to show the behavio
This work describes the effect of temperature on the phase transformation of titanium dioxide (TiO2) prepared using metal organic precursors as starting materials. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was used to investigate the structural properties of TiO2 gels calcined at different temperatures (300, 500, 700) ?C. the results showed that the samples have typical peaks of TiO2 polycrystalline brookite nanopowders after calcined at (300 ?C), which confirmed by (111), (121), (200), (012), (131), (220), (040), (231), (132) and (232) diffraction peaks. Also, XRD diffraction spectra showed the presence of crystallites of anatase with low proportion of rutile phase where calcined at (500 ?C), while rutile phase domains at (700 ?C). The crystallite size of
... Show MoreThe field of climatic geography focuses on the study of the Earth's surrounding atmosphere, particularly the lower (surface) part close to the Earth's surface. This field examines the interactions within the atmosphere resulting from the solar radiation that reaches the Earth and the subsequent distribution of atmospheric pressure. Consequently, certain surface pressure systems, both high and low, emerge and vary in their temporal and spatial impacts on the climate of the Arabian Peninsula. Therefore, it is essential to conduct a comprehensive and detailed study to understand the causes, development, movement, geographical distribution, and monthly and seasonal recurrence of these pressure systems. For this purpose, a minor climatic
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Mixed convection heat transfer to air inside an enclosure is investigated experimentally. The bottom wall of the enclosure is maintained at higher temperature than that of the top wall which keeps in oscillation motion, whereas the left and right walls are well insulated. The differential temperature of the bottom and top walls changed several times in order to accurately characterize the temperature distribution over a considerable range of Richardson number. Adjustable aspect ratio box was built as a test rig to determine the effects of Richardson number and aspect ratio on the flow behavior of the air inside the enclosure. The flow fields and the average Nusselt number profiles were presented in this wo
... Show MoreThe present study aimed to identify the therapeutic evaluation of chitosan extracted from the fungus cushroom and pure chitosan on glucose and lipid profile in the blood of 35 male rabbits with hyperlipidemia induced experimentally by cholesterol. The tests included estimation of glucose levels, total cholesterol, triglycerides, high-density lipoproteins, low-density lipoproteins, and very low-density lipoproteins. hyperlipidemia was induced in the male rabbits used in the study which was administered orally with cholesterol 150mg/kg body weight for a week. rabbits were divided into seven groups: control, cholesterol, pure chitosan, mushroom chitosan, cholesterol and pure chitosan, cholesterol and mushroom chitosan and cholestero
... Show MoreJet grouting is one of the most widely applied soil improvement techniques. It is suitable for most geotechnical problems, including improving bearing capacity, decreasing settlement, forming seals, and stabilizing slopes. One of the difficulties faced by designers is determining the strength and geometry of elements created using this method. Jet grouted soil-cement columns in soil are a complicated issue because they are dependent on a number of parameters such as soil type, grout and water flow rate, rotation and lifting speed of monitor, nozzle jetting force, and water to cement ratio of slurry. This paper discusses the effect of the water-cement ratio on the physical and mechanical characteristics of soilcrete. In t
... Show MoreIn this research, a study is introduced on the effect of several environmental factors on the performance of an already constructed quality inspection system, which was designed using a transfer learning approach based on convolutional neural networks. The system comprised two sets of layers, transferred layers set from an already trained model (DenseNet121) and a custom classification layers set. It was designed to discriminate between damaged and undamaged helical gears according to the configuration of the gear regardless to its dimensions, and the model showed good performance discriminating between the two products at ideal conditions of high-resolution images. So, this study aimed at testing the system performance at poo
... Show MoreIn this research, a study is introduced on the effect of several environmental factors on the performance of an already constructed quality inspection system, which was designed using a transfer learning approach based on convolutional neural networks. The system comprised two sets of layers, transferred layers set from an already trained model (DenseNet121) and a custom classification layers set. It was designed to discriminate between damaged and undamaged helical gears according to the configuration of the gear regardless to its dimensions, and the model showed good performance discriminating between the two products at ideal conditions of high-resolution images.
So, this study aimed at testing the system performance at poor s
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