Background: Despite the importance of vaccines in preventing COVID-19, the willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccines is lower among RA patients than in the general population. Objective: To determine the extent of COVID-19 knowledge among RA patients and their attitudes and perceptions of COVID-19 vaccines. Methods: A qualitative study with a phenomenology approach was performed through face-to-face, individual-based, semi-structured interviews in the Baghdad Teaching Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq, rheumatology unit. A convenient sample of RA patients using disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs was included until the point of saturation. A thematic content analysis approach was used to analyze the obtained data. Results: Twenty-five RA patients participated in this study. Regarding knowledge about COVID-19, most participants were able to define COVID-19, realize its contagious nature, and see the need for masks to get protection from this infection, while only a minority knew COVID-19 symptoms. Most participants obtained information about COVID-19 from TV programs and the public. Regarding COVID-19 vaccines, about 1/4 of the participants knew vaccine side effects, and only 12% of them had positive attitudes toward the vaccine. Additionally, 19 participants were unwilling to take the vaccine. The most common reasons behind this reluctance to take the vaccine include fear of the vaccine's short- and long-term side effects and the worsening of RA. Conclusion: RA patients' knowledge about COVID-19 and its vaccines was poor, and their attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines were negative.
In this work, an estimation of the key rate of measurement-device-independent quantum key distribution (MDI-QKD) protocol in free space was performed. The examined free space links included satellite-earth downlink, uplink and intersatellite link. Various attenuation effects were considered such as diffraction, atmosphere, turbulence and the efficiency of the detection system. Two cases were tested: asymptotic case with infinite number of decoy states and one-decoy state case. The estimated key rate showed the possibility of applying MDI-QKD in earth-satellite and intersatellite links, offering longer single link distance to be covered.
This study aims to develop a thermosensitive mucoadhesive periodontal in situ gel of secnidazole for local release of drug for treatment of periodontitis, in order to increase the drug residence time and to increase patient compliance while lowering the side effects of the drug.
Cold method was used to prepare 30 formulas of secnidazole periodontal in situ gel, using different concentrations of thermosensitive polymers (poloxamer407 alone or in combination with poloxamer 188) and methyl cellulose (MC ) or hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC K4M )in different concentrations used as mucoadhesive polymer and the resultant formulations were subjected to several tests such as gelation temperature GT, appearance and pH value. The fo
... Show MoreThis contribution provides an atomistic understanding into the impact of W, Nb, and Mo co-substitution at Hf-site of cubic HfO2 lattice to produce Hf1−xTMxO2 system at x = 25%. The calculations have been performed under the framework of density functional theory supported by Habbured parameter (DFT+U). Structural analysis demonstrates that the recorded lattice constants is in good coherence with the previously published results. For the lattice parameters, contraction by 1.33% comparing with the host system has been reported. Furthermore, the doping effect of TM on the band gap leads to its reduction in the resulting Hf0.75TM0.25O2 configurations. The partial density of states (PDOS) indicate that hybridization through localized electroni
... Show MoreIn this article, the casting method was used to prepare poly(methyl methacrylate)/hydroxyapatite (PMMA/HA) nanocomposite films incorporated with different contents (0.5, 1, and 1.5 wt%) of graphene nanoplatelets (Gnp). The chemical properties and surface morphology of the PMMA/HA blend and PMMA/HA/Gnp nanocomposite were characterized using FTIR, and SEM analysis. Besides, the thermal conductivity, dielectric and electrical properties at (1–107 Hz) of the PMMA/HA blend and PMMA/HA/Gnp composites were investigated. The structural analysis showed that the synthesized composites had a low agglomerated state, with multiple wrinkles of graphene flakes in the PMMA/HA blend. The thermal conductivity was improved by more than 35-fold its value for
... Show MoreProtection study of the corrosion behavior of Copper surface was conducted with several concentrations of drug. Experimentally, voltammetric measurements were used to check the inhibition efficiency (% IE) in saline solution of 3.5% NaCl. The results showed an increase in the inhibition efficiency with increasing the concentration of the drug was 95.90%. Theoretical treatment of the drug in the gas phase was performed using the (hyperchem-8.07) program for molecular mechanics and semi-empirical computations. The (PM3) approach was used to determine the heat of formation (1H˚f), binding energy (1Eb), and total energy (ET
This research studies the comparison of deep neural network models and performance evaluation to predict the gold prices of time series, where the gold prices contain high fluctuations and non-linear patterns that are difficult to capture using traditional models, which makes predicting them a significant challenge. Therefore, the focus was on using deep learning models represented by (LSTM), (Bi-LSTM), (GRU) and (Bi-GRU). The results showed the superiority of the (Bi-GRU) model according to comparison criteria (MSE), (RMSE), (MAE), and (R∧2) compared to other models because it was able to understand the time patterns better by processing the data in both directions and provided superior performance, which indicates its effectiveness, eff
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