Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in Iraq and the United Kingdom. While the disease is frequently diagnosed among middleaged Iraqi women at advanced stages accounting for the second cause of cancer-related deaths, breast cancer often affects elderly British women yielding the highest survival of all registered malignancies in the UK. Objective: To compare the clinical and pathological profiles of breast cancer among Iraqi and British women; correlating age at diagnosis with the tumor characteristics, receptor-defined biomarkers and phenotype patterns. Methods: This comparative retrospective study included the clinical and pathological characteristics of (1,940) consecutive female patients who were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer from 2014 to 2016 in Iraq (Medical City Teaching Hospital, Baghdad: 635 cases) and UK (John Radcliffe, Oxford and Queen's, BHR University Hospitals: 1,305 cases). The studied parameters in both groups comprised the age of the patient at the time of diagnosis, breast cancer histologic type, grade, tumor size, lymph node status, clinical stage at presentation, Estrogen Receptor (ER), Progesterone Receptor (PR) and HER2 positive tumor contents and the receptor defined breast cancer surrogate subtypes. Results: The Iraqi patients were significantly younger than their British counterparts and exhibited higher trend to present at advanced stages; reflected by larger size tumors and frequent lymph node involvement compared to the British (p<0.00001). They also had worse receptor-defined breast cancer subtypes manifested by higher rates of hormone receptor (ER/PR) negative, HER2 positive tumor contents, Triple Positive and Triple Negative phenotypes (p<0.00001). Excluding HER2 status, the significant differences in the clinical and tumor characteristics between the two populations persisted after adjusting for age among patients younger than 50 years. Conclusion: The remarkable differences in the clinical and tumor characteristics of breast cancer between the Iraqi and British patients suggest heterogeneity in the underlying biology of the tumor which is exacerbated in Iraq by the dilemma of delayed diagnosis. The significant ethnic disparities in breast cancer profiles recommend the prompt strengthening of the national cancer control plan in Iraq as a principal approach to the management of the disease.
The aim of this study is to shed light on the importance of biofuels as an alternative to conventional energy, in addition to the importance of preserving agricultural crops, which are the main source of this fuel, to maintain food security, especially in developing countries. The increase in global oil prices, in addition to the fear of global warming, are among the main factors that draw the world’s attention to searching for alternative sources of traditional energy, which are sustainable on the one hand, and on the other hand reduce carbon emissions. Therefore, the volume of global investment in renewable energy in general, and in liquid biofuels and biomass in particular, has increased. Global fears emerged that the excessive
... Show MoreIn this paper, a handwritten digit classification system is proposed based on the Discrete Wavelet Transform and Spike Neural Network. The system consists of three stages. The first stage is for preprocessing the data and the second stage is for feature extraction, which is based on Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). The third stage is for classification and is based on a Spiking Neural Network (SNN). To evaluate the system, two standard databases are used: the MADBase database and the MNIST database. The proposed system achieved a high classification accuracy rate with 99.1% for the MADBase database and 99.9% for the MNIST database
The present study involves experimental analysis of the modified Closed Wet Cooling Tower (CWCT) based on first and second law of thermodynamics, to gain a deeper knowledge in this important field of engineering in Iraq. For this purpose, a prototype of CWCT optimized by added packing under a heat exchanger was designed, manufactured and tested for cooling capacity of 9 kW. Experiments are conducted to explore the effects of various operational and conformational parameters on the towers thermal performance. In the test section, spray water temperature and both dry bulb temperature and relative humidity of air measured at intermediate points of the heat exchanger and packing. Exergy of water and air were calculated by applying the exergy
... Show MoreThis study investigates the feasibility of a mobile robot navigating and discovering its location in unknown environments, followed by the creation of maps of these navigated environments for future use. First, a real mobile robot named TurtleBot3 Burger was used to achieve the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technique for a complex environment with 12 obstacles of different sizes based on the Rviz library, which is built on the robot operating system (ROS) booted in Linux. It is possible to control the robot and perform this process remotely by using an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance service. Then, the map to the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) cloud was uploaded. This provides a database
... Show MoreThis paper proposes a completion that can allow fracturing four zones in a single trip in the well called “Y” (for confidential reasons) of the field named “X” (for confidential reasons). The steps to design a well completion for multiple fracturing are first to select the best completion method then the required equipment and the materials that it is made of. After that, the completion schematic must be drawn by using Power Draw in this case, and the summary installation procedures explained. The data used to design the completion are the well trajectory, the reservoir data (including temperature, pressure and fluid properties), the production and injection strategy. The results suggest that multi-stage hydraulic fracturing can
... Show MoreRecent population studies have shown that placenta accreta spectrum (PAS) disorders remain undiagnosed before delivery in half to two-thirds of cases. In a series from specialist diagnostic units in the USA, around one-third of cases of PAS disorders were not diagnosed during pregnancy. Maternal
This review delves deep into the intricate relationship between urban planning and flood risk management, tracing its historical trajectory and the evolution of methodologies over time. Traditionally, urban centers prioritized defensive measures, like dikes and levees, with an emphasis on immediate solutions over long-term resilience. These practices, though effective in the short term, often overlooked broader environmental implications and the necessity for holistic planning. However, as urban areas burgeoned and climate change introduced new challenges, there has been a marked shift in approach. Modern urban planning now emphasizes integrated blue-green infrastructure, aiming to harmonize human habitation with water cycles. Resil
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