Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with polymorphic expression. B cells have an essential contribution in immune system activation via the production of different cytokines and functioning as potent antigen-presenting cells. Therefore, a drug that particularly targets B cells may represent an ideal therapeutic approach for SLE. Rituximab (RTX), an anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody causing transient B-cell depletion, has been used to manage SLE. This study aims to assess Rituximab effects on lupus nephritis (LN) patients when added to conventional immunosuppressants. Twenty four patients, 15-32 years old, with class III/IV/V LN were involved in this study. All were on steroids before lupus nephritis occurrence. They were
... Show MoreBackground: The immune system of the oral cavity suffers alterations due to fixed orthodontic treatment which act as potent stimulus for oral secretory immunity. The aims of this study are to estimate the effect of fixed orthodontic appliance on the level of salivary sIgA at different time intervals, and to verify the gender difference. Materials and method: The patient's history, clinical examination, and fixed orthodontic appliances were placed for 30 Iraqi orthodontic adult patients had class II division 1 and/ or class I malocclusion (15 males and 15 females) aged 18-25 years old. The unstimulated whole saliva was collected from each sample immediately before wearing fixed appliance (control group T0 as base line), and after 2 weeks (T1
... Show MoreInformation processing has an important application which is speech recognition. In this paper, a two hybrid techniques have been presented. The first one is a 3-level hybrid of Stationary Wavelet Transform (S) and Discrete Wavelet Transform (W) and the second one is a 3-level hybrid of Discrete Wavelet Transform (W) and Multi-wavelet Transforms (M). To choose the best 3-level hybrid in each technique, a comparison according to five factors has been implemented and the best results are WWS, WWW, and MWM. Speech recognition is performed on WWS, WWW, and MWM using Euclidean distance (Ecl) and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW). The match performance is (98%) using DTW in MWM, while in the WWS and WWW are (74%) and (78%) respectively, but when using (
... Show MoreRecommendation systems are now being used to address the problem of excess information in several sectors such as entertainment, social networking, and e-commerce. Although conventional methods to recommendation systems have achieved significant success in providing item suggestions, they still face many challenges, including the cold start problem and data sparsity. Numerous recommendation models have been created in order to address these difficulties. Nevertheless, including user or item-specific information has the potential to enhance the performance of recommendations. The ConvFM model is a novel convolutional neural network architecture that combines the capabilities of deep learning for feature extraction with the effectiveness o
... Show MoreThis research deals with the design and simulation of a solar power system consisting of a KC200GT solar panel, a closed loop boost converter and a three phase inverter by using Matlab / Simulink. The mathematical equations of the solar panel design are presented. The electrical characteristics of the panel are tested at the values of 1000 for light radiation and 25 °C for temperature environment. The Proportional Integral (PI) controller is connected as feedback with the Boost converter to obtain a stable output voltage by reducing the oscillations in the voltage to charge a battery connected to the output of the converter. Two methods (Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Zeigler- Nichols) are used for tuning
... Show MoreIn this study, a new type of circulating three-phase fluidized bed reactor was conducted by adding a spiral path and was named as spiral three-phase fluidized bed reactor (TPFB-S) to investigate the possibility for removing engine oil (virgin and waste form) from synthetic wastewater by using Ricinus communis (RC) leaves natural and activated by KOH. The biosorption process was conducted by changing particle diameter in the range 150–300 and 300–600 µm, liquid flow rate in the range 2.5–4.5 L/min and gas flow rate in range of 0–1 L/min, while other parameters initial oil emulsion concentration, pH, adsorbent concentration, agitation speed and contact time were kept constant at 2000 mg/L, 2,
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is one of the most important relatively recent; treatment programs that attempt to modify behavior and control psychological disorders by modifying the individual's thinking style and awareness of himself and his environment, and cognitive reconstruction by replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. The current study aimed to know the effectiveness of a cognitive behavioral treatment program in reducing nervous fatigue among mothers of children with cerebral palsy. The sample on which the nervous fatigue scale was applied consisted of (30) mothers whose son suffers from cerebral palsy, and the results indicated that (24) mothers suffer from nervous fatigue. This sample was divided
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