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.
Pure nano Ferro fluid was synthesized by chemical co-precipitation method. The composite of polyaniline with nano sized Ferro fluid was prepared by In-situ–chemical oxidation polymerization method with ammonium per sulphate as an oxidant in aqueous hydrochloric acid under constant stirring at room temperature. The optical properties, absorption, transmission, optical energy gap (Eg) and optical constant refractive index (n) have been investigated. The value of the Eg decreased with increasing Ferro fluid concentration.
Due to advancements in computer science and technology, impersonation has become more common. Today, biometrics technology is widely used in various aspects of people's lives. Iris recognition, known for its high accuracy and speed, is a significant and challenging field of study. As a result, iris recognition technology and biometric systems are utilized for security in numerous applications, including human-computer interaction and surveillance systems. It is crucial to develop advanced models to combat impersonation crimes. This study proposes sophisticated artificial intelligence models with high accuracy and speed to eliminate these crimes. The models use linear discriminant analysis (LDA) for feature extraction and mutual info
... Show MoreThe Adaptive Optics technique has been developed to obtain the correction of atmospheric seeing. The purpose of this study is to use the MATLAB program to investigate the performance of an AO system with the most recent AO simulation tools, Objected-Oriented Matlab Adaptive Optics (OOMAO). This was achieved by studying the variables that impact image quality correction, such as observation wavelength bands, atmospheric parameters, telescope parameters, deformable mirror parameters, wavefront sensor parameters, and noise parameters. The results presented a detailed analysis of the factors that influence the image correction process as well as the impact of the AO components on that process
People’s ability to quickly convey their thoughts, or opinions, on various services or items has improved as Web 2.0 has evolved. This is to look at the public perceptions expressed in the reviews. Aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) deemed to receive a set of texts (e.g., product reviews or online reviews) and identify the opinion-target (aspect) within each review. Contemporary aspect-based sentiment analysis systems, like the aspect categorization, rely predominantly on lexicon-based, or manually labelled seeds that is being incorporated into the topic models. And using either handcrafted rules or pre-labelled clues for performing implicit aspect detection. These constraints are restricted to a particular domain or language which is
... Show MoreExtracting, studying and interpreting the morphological database of a basin is a basic building block for building a correct geomorphological understanding of this basin. In this work, Arc GIS 10.8 software and SRTM DEM satellite images were used. The principle of data integration was adopted by extracting the quantitative values of the morphometric characteristics that are affected by the geomorphological condition of the studied basin, then eliciting an optimal conception of the geomorphological condition of the basin from the meanings and connotations of these combined transactions. Hypsometric integration was extracted for each region in the basin separately with the value of integration of the plot curve for the relative heights of
... Show MoreSolar cells has been assembly with electrolytes including I−/I−3 redox duality employ polyacrylonitrile (PAN), ethylene carbonate (EC), propylene carbonate (PC), with double iodide salts of tetrabutylammonium iodide (TBAI) and Lithium iodide (LiI) and iodine (I2) were thoughtful for enhancing the efficiency of the solar cells. The rendering of the solar cells has been examining by alteration the weight ratio of the salts in the electrolyte. The solar cell with electrolyte comprises (60% wt. TBAI/40% wt. LiI (+I2)) display elevated efficiency of 5.189% under 1000 W/m2 light intensity. While the solar cell with electrolyte comprises (60% wt. LiI/40% wt. TBAI (+I2)) display a lower efficiency of 3.189%. The conductivity raises with the
... Show MoreCopper nanoparticles (CuNPs) were prepared with different diameters by sonoelectrodeposition technique using Electrodeposition process coupled with high-power ultrasound horn (Sonoelectrodeposition). The particle diameter of the CuNPs was adjusted by varying CuSO4 solution acidity (pH) and current density. The morphology and structure of the CuNPs were examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). It was found that the size of the produced copper nanoparticles ranged between 22 to 77 nm, where the diameter of CuNPs increases with reduction the solution acidity from 0.5 to 1.5 pH and increasing the current density of the deposition from 100 to 400 nm. Finally the produced CuNPs were pressed to fabricate disc
... Show MoreAlloys of GaxSb1-x system with different Ga concentration (x=0.4, 0.5, 0.6) have been prepared in evacuated quartz tubes. The structure of the alloys were examined by X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) and found to be polycrystalline of zincblend structure with strong crystalline orientation (220). Thin films of GaxSb1-x system of about 1.0 μm thickness have been deposited by flash evaporation method on glass substrate at 473K substrate temperature (Ts) and under pressure 10-6 mbar. This study concentrated on the effect of Ga concentration (x) on some physical properties of GaxSb1-x thin films such as structural and optical properties. The structure of prepared films for various values of x was polycrystalline. The X-ray diffraction analy
... Show MoreAdvances in gamma imaging technology mean that is now technologically feasible to conduct stereoscopic gamma imaging in a hand-held unit. This paper derives an analytical model for stereoscopic pinhole imaging which can be used to predict performance for a wide range of camera configurations. Investigation of this concept through Monte Carlo and benchtop studies, for an example configuration, shows camera-source distance measurements with a mean deviation between calculated and actual distances of <5 mm for imaging distances of 50–250 mm. By combining this technique with stereoscopic optical imaging, we are then able to calculate the depth of a radioisotope source beneath a surfa