Abstract Asthma is a complex disease defined by chronic airway inflammation and airflow limitation causing variable respiratory symptoms which include shortness of breath (SOB), wheezing, chest tightness and cough. Asthma guidelines advocate adding a second long acting bronchodilator to medium doses of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) rather using high doses of ICS alone to control moderate to severe persistent asthma. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical outcomes of three medication regimens indicated for Iraqi patients suffering from persistent asthma. This study was interventional randomized clinical study conducted on a sample of adult Iraqi asthmatic patients in Baghdad City. The study composed of three visits distributed over eight weeks; baseline visit followed by first follow up and second follow up visits after four and eight weeks respectively. The study enrolled 78 adult patients with moderate to severe persistent asthma as diagnosed by specialist physician according to patient history and baseline pulmonary function test (PFT) and allocated them randomly to three groups (each group included 26 patients) to receive equivalent medium doses of budesonide inhaler in addition to either formoterol inhaler, oral modified release aminophylline tablets or tiotropium inhaler (first, second and third group respectively). Sixty four patients completed this study. The mean ages of patients were above 35 years with slightly more male predominance. The study groups developed significant increase of peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) and forced vital capacity (FVC) values at the first follow up visit compared to baseline values (p<0.001). Thereafter, the first and third groups achieved significant higher values at the second follow up visit compared to first follow up visit (p<0.001), while second group produced no change. All the groups developed significant improvement of Mini asthma quality of life questionnaire (MiniAQLQ) scores and percentage of symptom free days (SFD) at first follow up visit and continued further significant improvement at the second follow up visit (p<0.001). Generally, between groups comparison according to extent of change of study parameters revealed that third group produced the greatest improvement over the entire study period followed by the first group, whereas the second group was associated with the least extent of improvement. This study concluded that all groups caused significant improvement in study parameters compared to baseline values and also concluded that the third group of inhaled [tiotropium/budesonide] was associated with the highest extent of improvement followed by first group, while the second group was the least.
Edward Albee, as a playwright, indicates that art should be useful and have a message. Therefore, his work foregrounds and critically examines issues concerning the Neurosis of Blackness and psychological trauma. Albee uses cruelty of racism in reflecting psychological trauma and emotional abuse of American black identity in his plays. Race, social inequality, and gender still sustain to engender controversy audience consciously. Racial discrimination is one of the major issues that affect the American Society. Albee challenges and exposes the presumptive dreams of equality of American society and institutional racism. Therefore, one of the main problems of the twentieth century in America is skin color. It
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The research included making a bibliography of the jurisprudential books available in the reference section of the central library at the University of Al-Mustansiriya. From this research, and I also saw that one of its objectives was to classify these books scientifically according to what was included in the Contemporary Islamic Fiqh Library of sections that were classified on its basis, according to what has settled in the custom of contemporary jurists, and according to the researcher’s view and his humble diligence, so the research was organized into an introduction and three topics. Each topic contained approximately five demands that included the sections of the contemporary jurisprudential lib
... Show More The current research aims at transforming the concept of implication from the rhetoric into the industrial design in order to have a new term (the design implication) in which the industrial designer takes all or part of another's design to imply his design in it and acknowledge that, and if he did not do so, it would be (design theft) parallel to the literary plagiarism.
In order to show the potentials of the industrial design in the production of new formulations of the industrial products forms, as the design is the carrier of language that addresses the recipients, it is possible to use the implication as a the tool of literature in the design and as a design strategy as it is one of the concepts that takes its course in e
The performance and lifetime of the flexible asphalt pavement are mainly dependent on the interfacial bond strength between layer courses. To enhance the bond between layers, adhesive materials, such as tack coats, are used. The tack coat itself is a bituminous material, which is applied on an existing relatively non-absorbent surface to ensure a strong bond between the old and newly paved layer. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of various types of tack coat materials on interlayer bond strength and to determine the optimal application rate for each type. The tack coat types used in this paper were RC-70, RC-250, and CSS-1h. Both laboratory-prepared and field-constructed hot mix asphalt concrete pavements usin
... Show MoreDesigning and Standardizing two tests for motor coordination timing for youth basketball players Research submitted by Prof. Faris sami & asst. prof. Wasan hanoon ali & asst. prof. Feras muttasher Baghdad University-College Of Physical Education and Sport Sciences Motor coordination in basketball is considered one of the most important factors for success in skill performance accuracy and speed due to the defensive and offensive situations of the game. The problem of the research lies in the lack of tests that can specify the growth of motor coordination through which the relative change for a number of players can be noticed due to practice and training. The subjects of the research were (30) young league players of National Center for gif
... Show MoreAg2O (Silver Oxide) is an important p-type (in chasm to most oxides which were n-type), with a high conductivity semiconductor. From the optical absorbance data, the energy gap value of the Ag2O thin films was 1.93 eV, where this value substantially depends on the production method, vacuum evaporation of silver, and optical properties of Ag2O thin films are also affected by the precipitation conditions. The n-type and p-type silicon substrates were used with porous silicon wafers to precipitate ±125 nm, as thick Ag2O thin film by thermal evaporation techniques in vacuum and via rapid thermal oxidation of 400oC and oxidation time 95 s, then characterized by measurement of
... Show MoreTo finalize any construction investment project, it would be necessary to identify the most significant problems and obstacles that lead to project reluctance and stalling. Unexpected events and conflicts may have disrupted these strategies and impacted project development. Due to the high initial investment costs of construction projects, crises can have an immediate impact, resulting in significant financial losses. The 2014 financial crisis was one of the most prominent crises that Iraq faced, which prompted the researcher to identify and evaluate those obstacles through this research and questionnaires using Pareto scientific theory to exclude factors that do not contribute to project lag. It was discovered that 28 o
... Show MoreElectromyogram (EMG)-based Pattern Recognition (PR) systems for upper-limb prosthesis control provide promising ways to enable an intuitive control of the prostheses with multiple degrees of freedom and fast reaction times. However, the lack of robustness of the PR systems may limit their usability. In this paper, a novel adaptive time windowing framework is proposed to enhance the performance of the PR systems by focusing on their windowing and classification steps. The proposed framework estimates the output probabilities of each class and outputs a movement only if a decision with a probability above a certain threshold is achieved. Otherwise (i.e., all probability values are below the threshold), the window size of the EMG signa
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