This paper critically looks at the studies that investigated the Social Network Sites in the Arab region asking whether they made a practical addition to the field of information and communication sciences or not. The study tried to lift the ambiguity of the variety of names, as well as the most important theoretical and methodological approaches used by these studies highlighting its scientific limitations. The research discussed the most important concepts used by these studies such as Interactivity, Citizen Journalism, Public Sphere, and Social Capital and showed the problems of using them because each concept comes out of a specific view to these websites. The importation of these concepts from a cultural and social context to an Ara

The deterioration of buried sewers during their lifetime can be affected by several factors leading to bad performance and can damage the infrastructure similar to other engineering structures. The Hydraulic deterioration of the buried sewers caused by sewer blockages while the structural deterioration caused by sewer collapses due to sewer specifications and the surrounding soil characteristics and the groundwater level. The main objective of this research is to develop deterioration models, which are used to predict changes in sewer condition that can provide assessment tools for determining the serviceability of sewer networks in Baghdad city. Two deterioration models were developed and tested using statistical software SPSS, the

In the presence of deep submicron noise, providing reliable and energy‐efficient network on‐chip operation is becoming a challenging objective. In this study, the authors propose a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ)‐based coding scheme that simultaneously reduces the crosstalk induced bus delay and provides multi‐bit error protection while achieving high‐energy savings. This is achieved by calculating two‐dimensional parities and duplicating all the bits, which provide single error correction and six errors detection. The error correction reduces the performance degradation caused by retransmissions, which when combined with voltage swing reduction, due to its high error detection, high‐energy savings are achieved. The res

Achieving reliable operation under the influence of deep-submicrometer noise sources including crosstalk noise at low voltage operation is a major challenge for network on chip links. In this paper, we propose a coding scheme that simultaneously addresses crosstalk effects on signal delay and detects up to seven random errors through wire duplication and simple parity checks calculated over the rows and columns of the two-dimensional data. This high error detection capability enables the reduction of operating voltage on the wire leading to energy saving. The results show that the proposed scheme reduces the energy consumption up to 53% as compared to other schemes at iso-reliability performance despite the increase in the overhead number o

Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most frequently observed malignancy in females worldwide. Today, tamoxifen (TAM) is considered as the highly effective therapy for treatment of breast tumors. Oxidative stress has implicated strongly in the pathophysiology of malignancies. This study aimed to investigate the changes in the levels of oxidants and antioxidants in patients with newly diagnosed and TAM-treated BC. Sixty newly diagnosed and 60 TAM-treated women with BC and 50 healthy volunteers were included in this study. Parameters including total oxidant capacity (TOC), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), and catalase (CAT) activity were determined before and after treatment with TAM. The serum levels of TOC and oxidative stress index (OSI) were

This paper aims to identify the approaches used in assessment the credit applications by Iraqi banks, as well as which approach is most used. It also attempted to link these approaches with reduction of credit default and banks’ efficiency particularly for the Gulf Commercial Bank. The paper found that the Gulf Bank widely relies on the method of Judgment Approach for assessment the credit applications in order to select the best of them with low risk of default. In addition, the paper found that the method of Judgment Approach was very important for the Gulf Bank and it driven in reduction the ratio of credit default as percentage of total credit. However, it is important to say that the adoption of statistical approaches for

Background: Diabetic patients have been reported to be more susceptible to gingivitis and periodontitis than healthy subjects. Many intracellular enzymes like (alkaline phosphatase- (ALP), aspartate aminotransferase- (AST) and alanine aminotransferase- (ALT) that are released outside cells into the gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) and saliva after destruction of periodontal tissue during periodontitis. This study was conducted to determine the periodontal health status and the levels of salivary enzymes (ALP, AST and ALT) of the study and control groups and to correlate the levels of these enzymes with clinical periodontal parameters in each study group. Subjects, Materials and Methods: One hundred subjects were enrolled in the study, with a