Background: Ulcerative colitis (UC) is an inflammatory bowel disease restricted to the large intestine, characterized by superficial ulceration. It is a progressive and chronic disease requiring long-term treatment. Although its etiology remains unknown, it is suggested that environmental factors influence genetically susceptible individuals, leading to the onset of the disease. (C-X-C) ligand 9 is a chemokine that belongs to the CXC chemokine family, it plays a role in the differentiation of immune cells such as cytotoxic lymphocytes, natural killer T cells, and macrophages. Its interaction with its corresponding receptor CXCR3 which is expressed by a variety of cells such as effector T cells, CD8+ cytotoxic T cells, and macrophage, leads to stimulation of the production of IFN-γ and TNF-α and in turn, stimulates the production of Th1 chemokines which results in promoting the inflammation. Objectives: To assess the significance of serum chemokine (C-X-C) ligand 9 as a potential marker for identifying ulcerative colitis in adults with inflammatory bowel disease. Patients and Methods: This is a case-control study that included 50 patients diagnosed with UC, aged between 18 and 75 years, compared to 50 healthy controls, aged between 18 and 60 years. The study was conducted between November 2022 and March 2023, at the Gastroenterology and Hepatology Teaching Hospital at the Medical City Complex in Baghdad. The serum samples were analyzed using the Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) technique. Results: The mean ± SD in pg/ml of serum CXCL9 in patient group was 26.9 ± 9.05 and in control group was 6.4 ± 2.37 (p< 0.0001) which indicates a highly significant difference. Conclusion: CXCL 9 may be employed as a biomarker for identifying ulcerative colitis and it can be used as a tool for measuring disease activity, in addition to the possibility of being a potential therapeutic target.
In this paper, a design of the broadband thin metamaterial absorber (MMA) is presented. Compared with the previously reported metamaterial absorbers, the proposed structure provides a wide bandwidth with a compatible overall size. The designed absorber consists of a combination of octagon disk and split octagon resonator to provide a wide bandwidth over the Ku and K bands' frequency range. Cheap FR-4 material is chosen to be a substate of the proposed absorber with 1.6 thicknesses and 6.5×6.5 overall unit cell size. CST Studio Suite was used for the simulation of the proposed absorber. The proposed absorber provides a wide absorption bandwidth of 14.4 GHz over a frequency range of 12.8-27.5 GHz with more than %90 absorp
... Show MoreFetal growth restriction is a significant contributor to fetal morbidity and mortality. In addition, there are heightened maternal risks associated with surgical operations and their accompanying dangers. Monitoring fetal development is a crucial objective of prenatal care and effective methods for early diagnosis of Fetal growth restriction, allowing prompt management and timely intervention to improve the outcomes. Screening for Fetal growth restriction can be achieved via many modalities; it can be medical, biochemical, or radiological. Some recommended combining more than one for better outcomes. Currently, there is inconsistency about the best method of Fetal growth restriction screening. In this review, a comprehensive
... Show MoreMost Internet of Vehicles (IoV) applications are delay-sensitive and require resources for data storage and tasks processing, which is very difficult to afford by vehicles. Such tasks are often offloaded to more powerful entities, like cloud and fog servers. Fog computing is decentralized infrastructure located between data source and cloud, supplies several benefits that make it a non-frivolous extension of the cloud. The high volume data which is generated by vehicles’ sensors and also the limited computation capabilities of vehicles have imposed several challenges on VANETs systems. Therefore, VANETs is integrated with fog computing to form a paradigm namely Vehicular Fog Computing (VFC) which provide low-latency services to mo
... Show MoreCyber-attacks keep growing. Because of that, we need stronger ways to protect pictures. This paper talks about DGEN, a Dynamic Generative Encryption Network. It mixes Generative Adversarial Networks with a key system that can change with context. The method may potentially mean it can adjust itself when new threats appear, instead of a fixed lock like AES. It tries to block brute‑force, statistical tricks, or quantum attacks. The design adds randomness, uses learning, and makes keys that depend on each image. That should give very good security, some flexibility, and keep compute cost low. Tests still ran on several public image sets. Results show DGEN beats AES, chaos tricks, and other GAN ideas. Entropy reached 7.99 bits per pix
... Show MoreAn encryption system needs unpredictability and randomness property to maintain information security during transmission and storage. Although chaotic maps have this property, they have limitations such as low Lyapunov exponents, low sensitivity and limited chaotic regions. The paper presents a new improved skewed tent map to address these problems. The improved skew tent map (ISTM) increases the sensitivity to initial conditions and control parameters. It has uniform distribution of output sequences. The programs for ISTM chaotic behavior were implemented in MATLAB R2023b. The novel ISTM produces a binary sequence, with high degree of complexity and good randomness properties. The performance of the ISTM generator shows effective s
... Show MoreThe heat transfer and flow resistance characteristics for air flow cross over circular finned tube heat exchanger has been studied numerically and experimentally. The purpose of the study was to improve the heat transfer characteristics of an annular finned-tube heat exchanger for better performance. The study has concentrated on the effect of the number of perforations and perforations shapes on the heat transfer and pressure drop across a staggered finned tube heat exchanger. The Numerical part of present study has been performed using ANSYS Fluent 14.5 using SST Turbulent model, while the experimental study consist from a test rig with different models of heat exchangers and all required measurement devices were build
... Show MoreThyroid hormones (TH) regulate the metabolic processes required for normal development and growth; also, to organizemetabolism in adults, any defect in thyroid function leads to abnormality in thyroid hormones level. The current study hasbeen designed to find the relationship between retinol-binding protein-4 and progranulin in the serum of Iraqi women withhypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism, also, to study whether these patients are exposed to a risk of developing diabetes mellitus,and PGRN may be a biomarker in detection early stage of diabetes mellitus.Materials and Methods: in this study, serum samples were obtained from 50 Iraqis women patients, [25 patients withhypothyroidism (G2) and 25 patients with hyperthyroidism (G3)] in addition
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