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.
Onchocerciasis is an infection with cutaneous, ocular and systemic manifestations caused by the filarial nematode Onchocerca volvulus, which is transmitted by the bite of various species of the anthropophilic blood-sucking Simulium vectors (black flies). Onchocerciasis is endemic to the savannahs and rainforests of subequatorial Africa and in some countries of the Arabian Peninsula, notably Yemen and Oman, and in Central America, and the Amazon basin of South America. Onchocercomas, which can be defined as subcutaneous fibrous nodules containing adult worms, are among the variable clinical manifestations of this infestation; they are either superficial or deep and usually located over bony prominences. In this paper we report a case of an o
... Show MoreEmotion could be expressed through unimodal social behaviour’s or bimodal or it could be expressed through multimodal. This survey describes the background of facial emotion recognition and surveys the emotion recognition using visual modality. Some publicly available datasets are covered for performance evaluation. A summary of some of the research efforts to classify emotion using visual modality for the last five years from 2013 to 2018 is given in a tabular form.
Optimization of well placement plays a considerable role in the production and maximizing the net present value of the investment of oil field developments. However, the application of the optimization techniques in well placement developments is so complicated because many decision variables, objective functions, and constraints are involved in the well placement optimization case. Furthermore, many computational techniques; conventional and non-conventional, have been utilized to optimize well placement operations. This study displays the advancement of the optimization methods applied in the well placement. Subsequently, the study assorted the applied optimization methods, and it demonstrates the restriction and the range of implementati
... Show MoreObjectives: Although the Frankfort Horizontal (FH) and sella-nasion were routinely used as craniofacial reference planes, the inter-individual orientations were changeable when related to true horizontal (HOR). Natural head position (NHP) is a reproducible, standardized position, with the head in an upright posture and eyes focused on a point in the distance at eye level so that the visual axis is horizontal. The natural head position has importance in anthropological as well as in orthodontic fields, as this position has a relatively fixed relationship to the true horizontal and vertical planes. However, NHP is clinically not simple and it takes long time to be recorded, in addition to a deficiency in the tools utilized in the NHP and l
... Show MoreIn this review paper, several research studies were surveyed to assist future researchers to identify available techniques in the field of infectious disease modeling across complex networks. Infectious disease modelling is becoming increasingly important because of the microbes and viruses that threaten people’s lives and societies in all respects. It has long been a focus of research in many domains, including mathematical biology, physics, computer science, engineering, economics, and the social sciences, to properly represent and analyze spreading processes. This survey first presents a brief overview of previous literature and some graphs and equations to clarify the modeling in complex networks, the detection of soc
... Show MoreThis paper is intended to focus on the existing relation between 'logic' and 'meaning', and how 'meaning' is looked at through logical perspective. Besides, this paper adopts simple logical symbols to represent some aspects of meaning.
Since meaning is still regarded as a thorny area that needs further study to determine its nature and borderline, this paper proposes to resort to logic and logical rules. This paper points out how logical rules are used and how they clarify some oblique sentences. The paper also sheds light on how meaningful sentences are logically symbolized and how logic can define the borderline of meaning in an adequate manner. This paper hypothesizes that logic, l
... Show MoreIn this review paper, several research studies were surveyed to assist future researchers to identify available techniques in the field of infectious disease modeling across complex networks. Infectious disease modelling is becoming increasingly important because of the microbes and viruses that threaten people’s lives and societies in all respects. It has long been a focus of research in many domains, including mathematical biology, physics, computer science, engineering, economics, and the social sciences, to properly represent and analyze spreading processes. This survey first presents a brief overview of previous literature and some graphs and equations to clarify the modeling in complex networks, the detection of soc
... Show MoreThe most influential theory of ‘Politeness’ was formulated in 1978 and revised in 1987 by Brown and Levinson. ‘Politeness’, which represents the interlocutors’ desire to be pleasant to each other through a positive manner of addressing, was claimed to be a universal phenomenon. The gist of the theory is the intention to mitigate ‘Face’ threats carried by certain ‘Face’ threatening acts towards others.
‘Politeness Theory’ is based on the concept that interlocutors have ‘Face’ (i.e., self and public – image) which they consciously project, try to protect and to preserve. The theory holds that various politeness strategies are used to prot
... Show MoreThe demand for electronic -passport photo ( frontal facial) images has grown rapidly. It now extends to Electronic Government (E-Gov) applications such as social benefits driver's license, e-passport, and e-visa . With the COVID 19 (coronavirus disease ), facial (formal) images are becoming more widely used and spreading quickly, and are being used to verify an individual's identity, but unfortunately that comes with insignificant details of constant background which leads to huge byte consumption that affects storage space and transmission, where the optimal solution that aims to curtail data size using compression techniques that based on exploiting image redundancy(s) efficiently.
Image Fusion is being used to gather important data from such an input image array and to place it in a single output picture to make it much more meaningful & usable than either of the input images. Image fusion boosts the quality and application of data. The accuracy of the image that has fused depending on the application. It is widely used in smart robotics, audio camera fusion, photonics, system control and output, construction and inspection of electronic circuits, complex computer, software diagnostics, also smart line assembling robots. In this paper provides a literature review of different image fusion techniques in the spatial domain and frequency domain, such as averaging, min-max, block substitution, Intensity-Hue-Saturation(IH
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