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 study aims to identify the concept of empowering women from the point of view of experts in the Palestinian society, specifically in Gaza, as well as to explore the foundations of their formation of this concept. Additionally, the study seeks to clarify the most important challenges facing the empowerment of women in Palestinian society. The study used the design of a grounded theory that seeks to build the theory through deep analysis of the data, as qualitative data were collected through holding two focus groups and six in-depth interviews with the study sample, who were selected by the method of targeted sampling. The sample included (16) individuals (9 female experts, 7 male experts) holding academic and community leadership pos
... Show MoreIn the process of translating Qur’anic texts, there is an urgent need for interpretations of the Qur’anic text due to the presence of many incomprehensible Qur’anic verses or words because of our distance from the standard Arabic, language in which the Holy Qur’an was revealed, and the introduction of the foreign words into our language, in addition to the fact that many Qur’anic words are no longer used. All this prompted the need for the interpretation of the Qur'anic text, Therefore, it is necessary for the translator to resort to the books of interpretation if he intends to translate the Qur’an
This research deals with the rhetoric purposes of the passive voice in the holy Quran. First, we put an introductory to the concept of the Quran language and its difference of the spoken Arabic language during the revelation period. Besides; we gave a brief about the structure passive voice form of Arabic language. Second, we explained the purposes of passive voice used in the holly Quran with sufficient examples, commentaries and clarifications about all the cases. Rhetoric purposes that we deals with are: concision, emphasize an idea, avoid using the subject because it is known and clear for all or because it is really unknown, etc. This part has contained the most important purposes for the use of passive voice in holy Quran. At the end
... Show Moren this study, data or X-ray images Fixable Image Transport System (FITS) of objects were analyzed, where energy was collected from the body by several sensors; each sensor receives energy within a specific range, and when energy was collected from all sensors, the image was formed carrying information about that body. The images can be transferred and stored easily. The images were analyzed using the DS9 program to obtain a spectrum for each object,an energy corresponding to the photons collected per second. This study analyzed images for two types of objects (globular and open clusters). The results showed that the five open star clusters contain roughly t
... Show MoreSupport Vector Machines (SVMs) are supervised learning models used to examine data sets in order to classify or predict dependent variables. SVM is typically used for classification by determining the best hyperplane between two classes. However, working with huge datasets can lead to a number of problems, including time-consuming and inefficient solutions. This research updates the SVM by employing a stochastic gradient descent method. The new approach, the extended stochastic gradient descent SVM (ESGD-SVM), was tested on two simulation datasets. The proposed method was compared with other classification approaches such as logistic regression, naive model, K Nearest Neighbors and Random Forest. The results show that the ESGD-SVM has a
... Show MorePalm vein recognition is a one of the most efficient biometric technologies, each individual can be identified through its veins unique characteristics, palm vein acquisition techniques is either contact based or contactless based, as the individual's hand contact or not the peg of the palm imaging device, the needs a contactless palm vein system in modern applications rise tow problems, the pose variations (rotation, scaling and translation transformations) since the imaging device cannot aligned correctly with the surface of the palm, and a delay of matching process especially for large systems, trying to solve these problems. This paper proposed a pose invariant identification system for contactless palm vein which include three main
... Show MoreMeans of communication has a great impact on all fields of awareness including health awareness by increasing the knowledge of community about health and developing their abilities to improve human health and cultural awareness. According to the importance of health awareness for a community to develop their intellectual and physical integrity, the researcher has found that it is essential to know the role of means of communication as a source of information for many students being active and main segments to build their society intellectually, socially and economically.
The research has focused on the study of health awareness among students and their health knowledge derived from the means of communicat
... Show MoreThis work addressed the assignment problem (AP) based on fuzzy costs, where the objective, in this study, is to minimize the cost. A triangular, or trapezoidal, fuzzy numbers were assigned for each fuzzy cost. In addition, the assignment models were applied on linguistic variables which were initially converted to quantitative fuzzy data by using the Yager’sorankingi method. The paper results have showed that the quantitative date have a considerable effect when considered in fuzzy-mathematic models.
This book includes four main chapters: 1. Indefinite Integral. 2. Methods of Integration. 3. Definite Integral. 4. Multiple Integral. In addition to many examples and exercises for the purpose of acquiring the student's ability to think correctly in solving mathematical questions.
We report a method of converting non-conductive plastic surfaces into conductive by plating either copper electroless or copper electroplating -carbon black containing bending Agent onto Perspex plastics . Various approaches have been studied in order to comparing properties of the plated copper for two methods such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM),thickness, roughness, porosity, tensile Strength and elongation. The results show that the surface of electroplating was uniform, compact, and continuous and it had an obvious metallic sheen, while the surface of plated copper for electroless for it had many pores. Also observed that the coating was composed of small cells. Thes
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