Abstract Background: Articular cartilage lesions in the knee joint are frequently seen,its treatment represents a challenge for orthopedic surgeons especially in young age patients and if left untreated,then they can progress to advanced osteoarthritis that may affect the functional status of the patients.Many treatment modalities had developed for these lesions, in the current study arthroscopic micro fracture plus intra articular whole bone marrow(WBM) injection was used as modality of treating these lesions. Objectives: to assess the effectiveness of arthroscopic micro fracture plus WBM intra articular injection as a treatment modality for knee articular cartilage lesions. Patients and Methods : a prospective experimental study was performed on 30 patients (14 females,16 males ) with a mean age of 38.6 years who had chondral lesions in their knee joint that failed to respond to conservative treatment.Arthroscopic micro fracture plus WBM intra articular injection was done to them.The functional assessment of the patients and their knee pain were evaluated by modified Cincinnati knee rating score (CKRS) and Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) respectively, both preoperatively and six months postoperatively. These results were compared. Results: there was statistically significant improvement in a modified CKRS and VAS six months after surgery.26 patients out of 30 patients (86.7 %) were improved. The improvement was statistically significant for those patients ≤ 40 years of age and also for those above 40 yeas of age, but it was more pronounced in those patients ≤ 40 years. Conclusion : Arthroscopic micro fracture plus intra articular WBM injection is an effective treatment modality for small,well defined,full thickness chondral lesions in the knee joint especially for those ≤ 40 years old on short term follow up. A long term follow up is needed.
This article presents a new cascaded extended state observer (CESO)-based sliding-mode control (SMC) for an underactuated flexible joint robot (FJR). The control of the FJR has many challenges, including coupling, underactuation, nonlinearity, uncertainties and external disturbances, and the noise amplification especially in the high-order systems. The proposed control integrates the CESO and SMC, in which the CESO estimates the states and disturbances, and the SMC provides the system robustness to the uncertainty and disturbance estimation errors. First, a dynamic model of the FJR is derived and converted from an underactuated form to a canonical form via the Olfati transformation and a flatness approach, which reduces the complexity of th
... Show MoreThe flexible joint robot manipulators provide various benefits, but also present many control challenges such as nonlinearities, strong coupling, vibration, etc. This paper proposes optimal second order integral sliding mode control (OSOISMC) for a single link flexible joint manipulator to achieve robust and smooth performance. Firstly, the integral sliding mode control is designed, which consists of a linear quadratic regulator (LQR) as a nominal control, and switching control. This control guarantees the system robustness for the entire process. Then, a nonsingularterminal sliding surface is added to give a second order integral sliding mode control (SOISMC), which reduces chartering effect and gives the finite time convergence as well. S
... Show MoreBackground: The bone mineral density of the lumbar vertebra has been assessed according to the results of the Dual-Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry (DEXA). Although anemia is known to affect bone mineral density, at the present time, it is not clear which vertebra is more affected by this disease. Objective: To evaluate the effects of anemia on the bone mineral density of the lumbar vertebra in comparison with a normal subject and determine which part of the lumbar vertebra is more affected by anemia. Methods: All 205 participants in this study complained of bone pain (90 males and 105 females). 95 patients, including both sexes, suffered from anemia. Additionally, the study included 110 seemingly healthy volunteers as the control group
... Show MoreThe aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between microRNA 378 and BMP15 gene expression levels in blood samples collected from 50 healthy fertile females as controls and 50 hyperprolactinemia infertile females by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Specific primers were designed for this purpose based on the sequences of microRNA 378 and BMP15 retrieved from NCBI and designed by primer 3 software. The result assessing the expression level of BMP15 in hyperprolactinemia (HPL) was 0.220, while the control group's fold change value was 1.000. The HPL group showed downregulation in the expression of the BMP15 gene. While the fold expression values of the miRNA378 gene in the hyperprolactinemia
... Show MoreThe tax system in Iraq plays a prominent role in the process of attracting foreign investments to operate the money in the investment market of our country, through the incentives provided by the legal texts that stimulate foreign investors and pay to contract, and those incentives are the tax exemptions and tax obtained by the foreign investor, The Iraqi turned to that issue in the Iraqi investment law currently in force and amended, but we will try to shed light in this study on the extent of those incentives compared to what is granted by the comparative legislation? Is it enough that the legal texts brought by the Iraqi legislator to encourage foreign investor and reassurance of his money through investment in commercial projects wit
... Show MoreOne of the most important problems facing the world today is the energy problem. The solution was in finding renewable energy sources such as solar energy. The solar energy applications in Iraq is facing many problems . One of the most important problems is the accumulation of dust on the solar panels surface which causes decreasing its performance sharply. In the present work, a new technique was presented by using two-axis solar tracking system to reduce the accumulated dust on the solar panel surface and compared it with the fixed solar panels which installed at tilt angles 30° and 45°. The results indicated that the maximum losses of the output power due to accumulation of dust on the fixed solar panels is about 31.4% and 23.1% res
... Show MoreA new application of a combined solvent extraction and two-phase biodegradation processes using two-liquid phase partitioning bioreactor (TLPPB) technique was proposed and developed to enhance the cleanup of high concentration of crude oil from aqueous phase using acclimated mixed culture in an anaerobic environment. Silicone oil was used as the organic extractive phase for being a water-immiscible, biocompatible and non-biodegradable. Acclimation, cell growth of mixed cultures, and biodegradation of crude oil in aqueous samples were experimentally studied at 30±2ºC. Anaerobic biodegradation of crude oil was examined at four different initial concentrations of crude oil including 500, 1000, 2000, and 5000 mg/L. Complete removal of crud
... Show MoreThe goal of present study was to investigate the benefits of broccoli (as antiandrogenic plant) in protection and treatment for reproductive hormonal and metabolic disturbance, which combined with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). The PCOS model was introduced by injecting subcutaneously prepubertal female rats at 21 days old with Letrozole for 39 days, and divided into 6 groups (8 rats each ) as follows:
Group 1: Female rats were injected with 0.1 ml of normal saline. Group 2: Female rats were injected with 0.1 ml of 400 µg Letrozole Group 3: Female rats were injected with 0.1 ml of 400 µg L with orally gavaged of broccoli juice. Group 4: Female rats were injected with 0.1 ml of normal saline and at the end of the last
Background: Promotion of bone health is particularly important for young women at reproductive age group, as the critical years for building bone mass are from pre-adolescence to about age 30 years.
patients and Methods: This cross sectional study was performed on three groups, first group of 30 women who had used combined pills for more than 2 years, second group of 30 women who had used Depo-Provera for more than 2 years, last group contain 30 women who had used barrier method or they didn’t use any contraceptive as a control group.Bone mineral density (BMD) of lumbar spine (L2-L4), right proximal femur was determined by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry in (femoral neck, greater trochanter, ward’s t