Background: With the increasing demand on esthetic orthodontic appliances, discoloration of clear elastomeric chains and modules remains an issue which concerns both orthodontics and patients. This in vitro study was conducted to evaluate the effect of exposing stretched clear elastomeric chains from six different companies (Ortho Technology, Ormco, Ortho Organizer, American Orthodontics, Opal and G&H companies) to three types of dietary media (tea, coffee and turmeric). Materials and methods: A total of 960 lengths of six modules were cut from short type elastomeric chain; 160 pieces from each brand. The specimens were stretched 50%, placed on plastic boards, and incubated in water at 37°C for 1 day, 7 days, 14 days and 28 days. Once a

Laser assisted skin wound closure offers many distinct advantages over conventional closure
techniques. The objective of this in vitro experimental study, carried out at the Institute of Laser for
Postgraduate Studies/Baghdad University, was to determine the effectiveness of 980 nm diode laser in
welding of human skin wounds. Multiple 3-4 cm long full thickness incisions in a specimen of human
skin obtained from the discarded panniculus of an Abdominoplasty operation were tried to be laser
welded using a 4 mm spot diameter laser beam from a 980 nm diode laser at different laser parameters
and modes of action. The tensile strength at the weld site was analyzed experimentally. Although laser
assisted wound welding did

Background: Different diagnostic definition and criteria have been recommended by different expert groups for the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome, however, it’s prevalence in the same population could differ depending on the definition used yielding different results. In Iraq, there is a lack of research comparing these different diagnostic definitions.

Objective: To find out the most suitable metabolic syndrome definition to be used for Iraqi people.

 Methods: 320 participants were recruited for this study, 53.4% men and 46.6% women, aged between 25-85 years, visiting Baghdad Teaching Hospital, the prevalence of metabolic syndrome according to different definition

Obesity is a chronic disease that may have genetic, environmental, and other causes. Obesity is a shortcut to many diseases, such as hypertension, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and other chronic diseases. Oxidative stress increases obesity through free radicals. Glutathione S-transferase (GST) is a metabolic enzyme used to remove toxins. This study aimed to determine GST activity in obese patients as a predictor of oxidative stress and the effectiveness of lipid profiling in obese patients. The study included 139 samples of obese and healthy people (obese group 84 and healthy group 55). Both groups (obese and healthy groups) were divided into four groups based on body mass index. Blood samples were collected from obese males and females in

Background: Infection with sexually
transmitted diseases is broad and includes
bacterial, viral and protozoa infection.
Large number of infected people goes
untreated because of symptomatic or
unrecognized infections.
Patients and methods: Forty five
patients was complaining from infertility
(primary or secondary), consulting
Kammal El-Sammari Hospital for
infertility from May - 2008 to February -
2009. Control group consisted of twenty
fertile women that consulting private clinic
for checking. Four swabs were taken from
each woman in two groups. Two swabs
were taken from posterior fornix of the
vagina (High vaginal swab) and the last
two were taken from endocervical canal.
First swab

This study aims to document and describe the speech sounds and sound inventory that are present in Sorani which is dialect of Kurdish and compare the results with their English counterparts.  The research concentrates on the voicing system and the quality of Sorani sounds which are measured by using the voice onset time (VOT) of the stop consonants, and the first three formants of the vowel sounds; the closure duration of voiceless stop consonants in medial position is measured as well.

Ten native speakers of the Sorani dialect (5 males and 5 females) participated in this experiment. All speakers are between 20 and 50 years of age, were born in Sulaimanyiah, migrated to the US, and remain in the US at the time of recording.

In recent years, the migration of the computational workload to computational clouds has attracted intruders to target and exploit cloud networks internally and externally. The investigation of such hazardous network attacks in the cloud network requires comprehensive network forensics methods (NFM) to identify the source of the attack. However, cloud computing lacks NFM to identify the network attacks that affect various cloud resources by disseminating through cloud networks. In this paper, the study is motivated by the need to find the applicability of current (C-NFMs) for cloud networks of the cloud computing. The applicability is evaluated based on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) to outlook the cloud network. T

Both the double-differenced and zero-differenced GNSS positioning strategies have been widely used by the geodesists for different geodetic applications which are demanded for reliable and precise positions. A closer inspection of the requirements of these two GNSS positioning techniques, the zero-differenced positioning, which is known as Precise Point Positioning (PPP), has gained a special importance due to three main reasons. Firstly, the effective applications of PPP for geodetic purposes and precise applications depend entirely on the availability of the precise satellite products which consist of precise satellite orbital elements, precise satellite clock corrections, and Earth orientation parameters. Secondly, th

Recently, the internet has made the users able to transmit the digital media in the easiest manner. In spite of this facility of the internet, this may lead to several threats that are concerned with confidentiality of transferred media contents such as media authentication and integrity verification. For these reasons, data hiding methods and cryptography are used to protect the contents of digital media. In this paper, an enhanced method of image steganography combined with visual cryptography has been proposed. A secret logo (binary image) of size (128x128) is encrypted by applying (2 out 2 share) visual cryptography on it to generate two secret share. During the embedding process, a cover red, green, and blue (RGB) image of size (512

The interest in art for young ages is seen as an obvious breakthrough and as revealing of psychological and health feelings in addition to emotions, and it is a treatment for those who suffer from behavioral disorders. The problem arose with the following question: What is the role of artistic expression in diagnosing behavioral disorders for primary school pupils? The aim of the research is to detect the behavioral disorders in the artistic expression of the female students' paintings from the teachers' point of view. The descriptive analytical approach was adopted as it is the appropriate method for identifying and estimating the characteristics and features related to people, places and things, and analyzing situations or phenomena as a