Background: Polymorphisms in the TNF-α gene affect the development and progression of rheumatoid arthritis. Objective: To investigate the associations between (-806 T/C) and (-857 T/C) SNPs with rheumatoid arthritis severity and susceptibility in a sample of Iraqi patients. Methods: A case-control study was conducted in Baghdad, Iraq. Twenty healthy controls and 63 patients confirmed to be newly diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis were included. Those are divided into two groups (patients and controls), and the patients were further subdivided into severe and mild-moderate groups. Samples from those participants were analyzed for clinical and inflammatory parameter measurements. Genotyping by the Sanger method was performed to stu

Heavy metals are currently of much environmental concern. The contamination by heavy metals in plants and water is one of the major issues to be faced throughout the world. This research is tried to estimate levels of heavy metals in vegetative crops and soil irrigated with well water (as alternative source for irrigation). Samples of well water, soil and vegetative crops were collected from agriculture fields at Al-Dora district in Baghdad. Physico-chemical parameters (pH, EC, TDS and Salinity) were measured for water and (pH, EC and salinity) for soil samples. Estimation of Lead (Pb), Nickle (Ni), Zinc (Zn) and Iron (Fe) concentrations in water, vegetable crops (Raphanus sativus, Apium graveoleus, Beta vulgaris, Allium ampeloprasum, Le

This study tries to clear the correlation and association between asthma, obesity and leptin levels. Also it will work to indicate the main risk factors which play role in the elevation of leptin level within asthmatic patients.  This is a case control study conducted on (38) asthmatic patients and (20) healthy control who were closely similar by age, gender and BMI. The main statistical tests used were student t test, linear regression test and correlation test. Significance was set at P < 0.05. Sampling method used for this study was convenience sampling method.  The main results of this study show a significant association and positive correlation between age (old age  â‰¥ 40 ye

The present theoretical study analyzes the legacy of the Chicago School of Urban Sociology and evaluates it in the light of the growth and development of Chicago City and the establishment of sociology in it. Sociology has become an academic discipline recognized in the United States of America in the late nineteenth century, particularly, after the establishment of the first department of sociology in the University of Chicago in 1892. That was during the period of the rapid industrialization and sustainable growth of the Chicago City. The Chicago School relied on Chicago City in particular, as one of the American cities that grew and expanded rapidly in the first two decades of the twentieth century. At the end of the nineteenth centur

The study of the " Speech act " in grammatical codes reveals great efforts in the study of the elements of linguistic communication contained in their efforts, and is part of the study of the linguistics of heritage, and the research has been designed to identify the verbal act in the blog of Ibn al-Khabaz (guiding the shine) by studying its sections comprehensively; To the spirit of grammatical discourse as well as the combination of the concept of the semantic act already verbal according to Searle, and its response in the form of indirect verbal acts more than direct acts, as well as the pure formulas of the opinions of the violators in the speech of Ibn al-Khabaz other than the proven verbal formulas Approval and approval, the class

Drilling with casing (DWC) can be considered as a modern drilling technique in which both of drilling and casing operations done in the same time by using the casing to transfer the hydraulic and mechanical power to the bit instead of traditional drilling string. To overcome oil well control, minimizing the total cost through enhancing drilling efficiency, drilling with casing was proposed as an enabling technology.

   Two surface sections (17 1/2 - and 12 1/4- inch) were drilled successfully in Rumaila oil field with  casing strings which reached 655m and 1524m measured depths respectively.

   By using DWC technique, the total drill/case phase time was reduced up to 20% comparing to conventional

Background: Radiopacity is one of the prerequisites for dental materials, especially for composite restorations. It's essential for easy detection of secondary dental caries as well as observation of the radiographic interface between the materials and tooth structure. The aim of this study to assess the difference in radiopacity of different resin composites using a digital x-ray system. Materials and methods: Ten specimens (6mm diameter and 1mm thickness) of three types of composite resins (Evetric, Estelite Sigma Quick,and G-aenial) were fabricated using Teflon mold. The radiopacity was assessed using dental radiography equipment in combination with a phosphor plate digital system and a grey scale value aluminum step wedge with thickness

Fingerprint recognition is one among oldest procedures of identification. An important step in automatic fingerprint matching is to mechanically and dependably extract features. The quality of the input fingerprint image has a major impact on the performance of a feature extraction algorithm. The target of this paper is to present a fingerprint recognition technique that utilizes local features for fingerprint representation and matching. The adopted local features have determined: (i) the energy of Haar wavelet subbands, (ii) the normalized of Haar wavelet subbands. Experiments have been made on three completely different sets of features which are used when partitioning the fingerprint into overlapped blocks. Experiments are conducted on

In this work optical window for infrared region was prepared by using Aluminum Oxide (Al2O3)material as antireflection coating on ZnSe substrate which covers the atmospheric window 3-5µm. the maximum transition was 97% at a wavelength 0f 4.4µm.