Physicians are infrequently selected to serve in the yearlong role of Jefferson Science Fellow (JSF) as senior science advisor for the US Department of State or the United States Agency for International Development. The authors discuss the role of a JSF in promoting “science diplomacy” from the perspective of one alumnus, who sites examples of ongoing, long-term collaborative projects including one focusing on medical education reform in Iraq that would not have been possible without the JSF program. More than 3 decades of political and social unrest, terrorism, the internal displacement of millions of Iraqi citizens, the arrival of Syrian refugees, international sanctions, and the effect of fluctuating oil prices that fund education in Iraq have all led to a standstill in modernizing educational systems and the need for reform. In 2016, new opportunities for international collaboration and travel allowed faculty from the Al …
The guava plant, Psidium guajava L., serves as proof of the abundant donations of nature, providing a delicious guava fruit; this plant is rich in groups of medicinal and nutritional benefits. Guava belonging to the Myrtaceae family, many previous studies reported many phytochemical constituents in its leaves that have many pharmacological activities and medicinal properties; this study focuses on the isolation, structural elucidation and calculation concentration of flavonoids, assessment of the cytotoxic activityof hyperin from Psidium guajava leaves newly cultivated in Iraq. The isolation process involved the use of thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (PHPLC) and structural eluci
... Show MoreThe largest use of x-ray in medical by dentists, employers or persons that needed by patients with specific conditions, lead to higher exposure of x-ray that may cause many diseases. In the present work radiography films have been used in evaluating the efficiency of using unsaturated polyester polymer reinforced with lead oxide (PbO) as shield material for medical x-ray devices, many parameters studied like concentration and thickness that they are increasing the attenuation of x-ray in them. The results show that the attenuation of X-ray increasing with concentration of reinforced material and with thickness, and the optical density decreases with increasing concentration from 0% to 50%, we chose 30% as suitable concentration to increase
... Show MoreHuge number of medical images are generated and needs for more storage capacity and bandwidth for transferring over the networks. Hybrid DWT-DCT compression algorithm is applied to compress the medical images by exploiting the features of both techniques. Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) coding is applied to image YCbCr color model which decompose image bands into four subbands (LL, HL, LH and HH). The LL subband is transformed into low and high frequency components using Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) to be quantize by scalar quantization that was applied on all image bands, the quantization parameters where reduced by half for the luminance band while it is the same for the chrominance bands to preserve the image quality, the zig
... Show MoreAt the end of 2019, a new form of Coronavirus (later dubbed COVID-19) emerged in China and quickly spread to other regions of the globe. Despite the virus’s unique and unknown characteristics, it is a widely distributed infectious illness. Finding the geographical distribution of the virus transmission is therefore critical for epidemiologists and governments in order to respond to the illness epidemic rapidly and effectively. Understanding the dynamics of COVID-19’s spatial distribution can help to understand the pandemic’s scope and effects, as well as decision-making, planning, and community action aimed at preventing transmission. The main focus of this study is to investigate the geographic patterns of COVID-19 disseminat
... Show MoreThe manufacturing industry in Iraq has faced, during the time stages, several obstacles that have had devastating effects on the Iraqi economy. These obstacles are represented by political events and wars that have led to the depletion of most human and material resources and the suspension of most vital industrial facilities from working, And the occurrence of this major deviation in the process of economic development, For the same reasons, the contributions of the manufacturing sector to the gross domestic product varied fluctuatingly, indicating instability in the growth rates of this sector, On the other hand, the supremacy of the belief that the dominance of oil resources as a main source for creating economic growth and achieving a h
... Show MoreThe study aimed to survey mushroom species from fields among herbs, palm trunks, and trees in central Iraq and to identify them on the basis of morphological and molecular characteristics. As a molecular identification result with polymerase chain reaction six species were recorded (with eight isolates): Agaricus bitorquis (Quéllt) Saccardo. 1887 (SHA14); Candolleomyces candolleanus (Fr.) D. Wächter & Melzer, 2020 (SHA15); Cyclocybe cylindracea (D.C.) Vizzini & Angelini, 2014 (SHA13); Leucoagaricus hesperius Vellinga, 2010 (SHA16); Volvariella sp. (SHA17), and Volvopluteus gloiocephalus (D. C.) Vizzini, Contu & Justo, 2011 (SHA10, SHA101 and SHA12), belonging to four families of Basidiomycetes: Agaricaceae, Pluteaceae,
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