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.
The aim of this work is to develop an axi-symmetric two dimensional model based on a coupled simplified computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and Lagrangian method to predict the air flow patterns and drying of particles. Then using this predictive tool to design more efficient spray dryers. The approach to this is to model what particles experience in the drying chamber with respect to air temperature and humidity. These histories can be obtained by combining the particles trajectories with the air temperature/humidity pattern in the spray dryer. Results are presented and discussed in terms of the air velocity, temperature, and humidity profiles within the chambers and compared for drying of a 42.5% solids solution in a spray chamber
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In this research we study the wavelet characteristics for the important time series known as Sunspot, on the aim of verifying the periodogram that other researchers had reached by the spectral transform, and noticing the variation in the period length on one side and the shifting on another.
A continuous wavelet analysis is done for this series and the periodogram in it is marked primarily. for more accuracy, the series is partitioned to its the approximate and the details components to five levels, filtering these components by using fixed threshold on one time and independent threshold on another, finding the noise series which represents the difference between
... Show MoreResearch was: 1- known as self-efficacy when students perceived the university. 2- know the significance of statistical differences in perceived self-efficacy according to gender and specialty. Formed the research sample of (300) students were chosen from the original research community by way of random (150) male specialization and scientific and humanitarian (150) females specialized scientific and humanitarian. The search tool to prepare the yard tool to measure perceived self-efficacy based on measurements and previous literature on the subject of perceived self-efficacy. The researcher using a number of means, statistical, including test Altaúa and analysis of variance of bilateral and results showed the enjoyment of the research s
... Show MoreDifferent ANN architectures of MLP have been trained by BP and used to analyze Landsat TM images. Two different approaches have been applied for training: an ordinary approach (for one hidden layer M-H1-L & two hidden layers M-H1-H2-L) and one-against-all strategy (for one hidden layer (M-H1-1)xL, & two hidden layers (M-H1-H2-1)xL). Classification accuracy up to 90% has been achieved using one-against-all strategy with two hidden layers architecture. The performance of one-against-all approach is slightly better than the ordinary approach
In the current study, a novel approach for separating ethanol-water mixture by microbubble distillation technology was investigated. Traditional distillation processes require large amounts of energy to raise the liquid to its boiling point to effect removal of volatile components. The concept of microbubble distillation by comparison is to heat the gas phase rather than the liquid phase to achieve separation. The removal of ethanol from the thermally sensitive fermentation broths was taken as a case of study. Consequently the results were then compared with those which could be obtained under equilibrium conditions expected in an “ideal” distillation unit. Microbubble distillation has achieved vapour compositions higher than th
... Show MoreA new approach for baud time (or baud rate) estimation of a random binary signal is presented. This approach utilizes the spectrum of the signal after nonlinear processing in a way that the estimation error can be reduced by simply increasing the number of the processed samples instead of increasing the sampling rate. The spectrum of the new signal is shown to give an accurate estimate about the baud time when there is no apriory information or any restricting preassumptions. The performance of the estimator for random binary square waves perturbed by white Gaussian noise and ISI is evaluated and compared with that of the conventional estimator of the zero crossing detector.
The significant shortage of usable water resources necessitated the creation of safe and non-polluting ways to sterilize water and rehabilitate it for use. The aim of the present study was to examine the ability of using a gliding arc discharge to inactivate bacteria in water. Three types of Bacteria satisfactory were used to pollute water which are Escherichia coli (Gram-negative), Staphylococcus aurous (Gram-positive) and salmonella (Gram-negative). A DC power supply 12V at 100 Hz frequency was employed to produce plasma. pH of water is measured gradually during the plasma treatment process. Contaminated water treated by gliding arc discharge at steadying the gas flow rate (1.5 l/mi
The present study aimed at identifying the level of psychological alienation and motivation of achievement among the incoming teachers in the schools of Dhofar Governorate in the Sultanate of Oman a well as to explore the correlation relationship between psychological alienation and motivation of achievement. The sample of the study consisted of (238) expatriated teachers from Al- Dhofar Governorate in Oman who were selected randomly. The psychological alienation scale and the motivation of achievement scale for teachers were used by researchers and were conducted electronically by google forms. The data were processed statistically using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results showed that the level of psy
... Show MoreThe problem of research is that the colleges of education in general and the College of Education in particular continue to follow traditional administrative patterns and that there is a complaint that the educational outputs do not match the aspirations of the society and its future directions. The aim of the research is to identify the reality of quality assurance standards in the college and to create a future vision for these standards to apply them. The researcher has designed a questionnaire based on the responses of the research sample which consisted of a group of university teachers to identify the quality assurance standards. The findings revealed that it is necessary to find a clear approach to apply the standards of quality i
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