Abstract Background Infections with helminths are associated with deficient sanitary facilities, unsafe human waste disposal, inadequate and lack of safe drinking water, and low socioeconomic status. Objective To determine the prevalence of some gastrointestinal helminths among Iraqi people, and association of infections with age, sex, and region in Iraq. Method This study is retrospective, including reported cases of infections using an available surveillance database from January 2013 to December 2013 of all provinces of Iraq by the Ministry of Health. Result The overall prevalence of gastrointestinal helminthiasis was 1.39%. Enterobius vermicularis found to be the predominant helminth parasite. No significant (P < 0.05) relationship was found between sex and infection, although male individuals tended to show greater helminthiasis, while a significant relationship was found between age and infection. The common infections were more frequent among the 5-14 year age group. We found a lower prevalence of helminth infections in the northern (Ninevah, Suleimaniyah, Ta’mim, Erbil, and Dohuk) and middle Euphrates (Babil, Karbala, Najaf, Qadisiyah, and Muthanna) region provinces, compared with the middle (Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, and Salahuddin) and southern (Wasit, Dhi-qar, Misan, and Basrah) region provinces where the prevalence was higher. Conclusion In this study, we found lower prevalence of infections in Iraq than similar studies conducted in other parts
A new modified differential evolution algorithm DE-BEA, is proposed to improve the reliability of the standard DE/current-to-rand/1/bin by implementing a new mutation scheme inspired by the bacterial evolutionary algorithm (BEA). The crossover and the selection schemes of the DE method are also modified to fit the new DE-BEA mechanism. The new scheme diversifies the population by applying to all the individuals a segment based scheme that generates multiple copies (clones) from each individual one-by-one and applies the BEA segment-wise mechanism. These new steps are embedded in the DE/current-to-rand/bin scheme. The performance of the new algorithm has been compared with several DE variants over eighteen benchmark functions including sever
... Show MoreIn this study, a double frequency Q-switching Nd:YAG laser beam (1064 nm and λ= 532 nm, repetition rate 6 Hz and the pulse duration 10ns) have been used, to deposit TiO2 pure and nanocomposites thin films with noble metal (Ag) at various concentration ratios of (0, 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 wt.%) on glass and p-Si wafer (111) substrates using Pulse Laser Deposition (PLD) technique. Many growth parameters have been considered to specify the optimum condition, namely substrate temperature (300˚C), oxygen pressure (2.8×10-4 mbar), laser energy (700) mJ and the number of laser shots was 400 pulses with thickness of about 170 nm. The surface morphology of the thin films has been studied by using atomic force microscopes (AFM). The Root Mean Sq
... Show More<p>Analyzing X-rays and computed tomography-scan (CT scan) images using a convolutional neural network (CNN) method is a very interesting subject, especially after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In this paper, a study is made on 423 patients’ CT scan images from Al-Kadhimiya (Madenat Al Emammain Al Kadhmain) hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, to diagnose if they have COVID or not using CNN. The total data being tested has 15000 CT-scan images chosen in a specific way to give a correct diagnosis. The activation function used in this research is the wavelet function, which differs from CNN activation functions. The convolutional wavelet neural network (CWNN) model proposed in this paper is compared with regular convol
... Show MoreIn this work, the effect of the addition of bright nickel plating and silver carried out by the electroplating method has been studied, on the coating of copper nanoparticles on the copper base metal via the process of thermal evaporation. The improvement of the solar absorber using CuNP in combination with the bright nickel and silver was obtained to be better than copper nanoparticles individually. A bright nickel enhanced the absorbed thermal stability. Also, other optical properties, absorptions, and emissivity slightly decreased from (93% to 87%), while the existence of silver had a slight impact on absorption of about (86.50%). On the other hand, thermal conductivity was evaluated using hot disk analyzer. The results showed a good
... Show MoreIn this work, diamond-like carbon (DLC) thin films were prepared from Cyclohexane. Thin films were deposited on quartz substrate by atmospheric pressure Argon plasma jet system. The plasma jet system was applying high voltage sinusoidal waves of frequency 28 kHz and potential difference of 7.5kV peak to peak across the electrodes. The effect of annealing at 400, 500 and 600 °C under vacuum for two hours on optical properties and structural properties of the DLC thin films were investigated. This effect was clarified by X-ray diffraction (XRD), FTIR, UV-Visible absorption, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Raman Spectroscopy. The X-ray diffraction patterns for the annealing DLC thin films show two broad peaks at 2θ, 26.62° and 51.58
... Show MoreHydatid disease is a zoonotic infection caused by Echinococcus species. The cystic form of this infection mostly involves liver and lung. Hydatid disease of the parotid gland even in endemic regions is a very rare entity that may be easily overlooked in daily practice. Herein, I present a case report of a 60-year-old Iraqi female patient who presented with a progressively painless mass in her right parotid. It was diagnosed radiologically as a hydatid cyst and was excised successfully. Histopathologic examination of the resected specimen confirmed the hydatid cyst. This case emphasizes the importance of considering hydatidosis in the differential diagnosis of any parotid mass, especially in endemic countries.
 
... Show More This paper describes the application of consensus optimization for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) system. Consensus algorithm is usually conducted within a certain number of iterations for a given graph topology. Nevertheless, the best Number of Iterations (NOI) to reach consensus is varied in accordance with any change in number of nodes or other parameters of . graph topology. As a result, a time consuming trial and error procedure will necessary be applied
to obtain best NOI. The implementation of an intellig ent optimization can effectively help to get the optimal NOI. The performance of the consensus algorithm has considerably been improved by the inclusion of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). As a case s
In this paper generalized spline method is used for solving linear system of fractional integro-differential equation approximately. The suggested method reduces the system to system of linear algebraic equations. Different orders of fractional derivative for test example is given in this paper to show the accuracy and applicability of the presented method.
Problem of water scarcity is becoming common in many parts of the world. Thus to overcome this problem proper management of water and an efficient irrigation systems are needed. Irrigation with buried vertical ceramic pipe is known as a very effective in management of irrigation water. The two- dimensional transient flow of water from a buried vertical ceramic pipe through homogenous porous media is simulated numerically using the software HYDRUS/2D to predict empirical formulas that describe the predicted results accurately. Different values of pipe lengths and hydraulic conductivity were selected. In addition, different values of initial volumetric soil water content were assumed in this simulation a
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Semiconductor-based gas sensors were prepared, that use n-type tin oxide (SnO2) and tin oxide: zinc oxide composite (SnO2)1-x(ZnO)x at different x ratios using pulse laser deposition at room temperature. The prepared thin films were examined to reach the optimum conditions for gas sensing applications, namely X-ray diffraction, Hall effect measurements, and direct current conductivity. It was found that the optimum crystallinity and maximum electron density, corresponding to the minimum charge carrier mobility, appeared at 10% ZnO ratio. This ratio appeared has the optimum NO2 gas sensitivity for 5% gas concentration at 300 °C working temperat
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