The cyanobacterial neurotoxinβ-N-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA) is considered to be an “excitotoxin,” and its suggested mechanism of action is killing neurons. Long-term exposure to L-BMAA is believed to lead to neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Objectives of this study were to determine the presumptive median lethal dose (LD₅₀), the Lowest-Observed-Adverse-Effect Level (LOAEL), and histopathologic lesions caused by the naturally occurring BMAA isomer, L-BMAA, in mice. Seventy NIH Swiss Outbred mice (35 male and 35 female) were used. Treatment group mice

     Optimization is the task of minimizing or maximizing an objective function f(x) parameterized by x. A series of effective numerical optimization methods have become popular for improving the performance and efficiency of other methods characterized by high-quality solutions and high convergence speed. In recent years, there are a lot of interest in hybrid metaheuristics, where more than one method is ideally combined into one new method that has the ability to solve many problems rapidly and efficiently. The basic concept of the proposed method is based on the addition of the acceleration part of the Gravity Search Algorithm (GSA) model in the Firefly Algorithm (FA) model and creating new individuals. Some stan

      Restoration is the main process in many applications. Restoring an original image from a damaged image is the foundation of the restoring operation, either blind or non-blind. One of the main challenges in the restoration process is to estimate the degradation parameters. The degradation parameters include Blurring Function (Point Spread Function, PSF) and Noise Function. The most common causes of image degradation are errors in transmission channels, defects in the optical system, inhomogeneous medium, relative motion between object and camera, etc. In our research, a novel algorithm was adopted based on Circular Hough Transform used to estimate the width (radius, sigma) of the Point Spread Function. This algorithm is based o

Background: Nursing interventions tailored to the smoking triggers in patients with non-communicable chronic diseases are essential. However, these interventions are scant due to the nature of factors associated with smoking cessation and the poor understanding of the effect of nurse-led intervention in Iraq.Purpose: This study aimed to determine the dominant smoking triggers and examine the effects of a tailored nursing intervention on smoking behavior in patients with non-communicable chronic diseases.Methods: Convenience samples of 128 patients with non-communicable chronic diseases, male and female patients, who were 18-70 years old, were recruited in this quasi-experimental, randomized comparative trial in the outpatient clinic

Background:-Anorectal malformation is a congenital anomaly of different varieties and its correction needs good experience , knowledge about this varieties and specific surgical tools,
otherwise the child may lose his the only chance to live normally without disastrous complication like incontinence.
Objective:-assessment of the advantage of this procedure in management of anorectal malformations and the percentage for anal continence.
Patients and methods:-. This study was carried out in the child's central teaching hospital in Baghdad total number (70) cases were included in the study, 37 males and 33 females: aged 7 days to 6 years. They attended the hospital between October 1998-october 2004.
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يعد هذا النص أحد النصوص المسمارية المصادرة التي بحوزة المتحف العراقي، ويحمل الرقم المتحفي (235869)، قياساته )12،7x 6x 2،5سم). يتضمن مدخولات كميات من الشعير،أرخ النص الى عصر أور الثالثة (2012-2004 ق.م) و يعود الى السنة الثالثة من حكم الملك أبي-سين (2028-2004 ق.م)،أن الشخصية الرئيسة في هذا النص هو)با-اَ-كا مسمن الماشية( من مدينة أري-ساكرك، ومقارنته مع النصوص المسمارية المنشورة التي تعود الى أرشيفه يبلغ عددها (196) نصاً تضمنت نشاطاته م

Objective: To conduct a standardized method for cavity preparation on the palatal surface of rat maxillary molars and to introduce a standardized method for tooth correct alignment within the specimen during the wax embedding procedure to better detect cavity position within the examined slides. Materials and methods: Six male Wistar rats, aged 4-6 weeks, were used. The maxillary molars of three animals were sectioned in the frontal plane to identify the thickness of hard tissue on the palatal surface of the first molar which was (250-300µm). The end-cutting bur (with a cutting head diameter of 0.2mm) was suitable for preparing a dentinal cavity (70-80µm) depth. Cavity preparation was then performed using the same bur on the tooth surf

A multivariate multisite hydrological data forecasting model was derived and checked using a case study. The philosophy is to use simultaneously the cross-variable correlations, cross-site correlations and the time lag correlations. The case study is of two variables, three sites, the variables are the monthly rainfall and evaporation; the sites are Sulaimania, Dokan, and Darbandikhan.. The model form is similar to the first order auto regressive model, but in matrices form. A matrix for the different relative correlations mentioned above and another for their relative residuals were derived and used as the model parameters. A mathematical filter was used for both matrices to obtain the elements. The application of this model indicates i