Background: Polymorphisms in the TNF-α gene affect the development and progression of rheumatoid arthritis. Objective: To investigate the associations between (-806 T/C) and (-857 T/C) SNPs with rheumatoid arthritis severity and susceptibility in a sample of Iraqi patients. Methods: A case-control study was conducted in Baghdad, Iraq. Twenty healthy controls and 63 patients confirmed to be newly diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis were included. Those are divided into two groups (patients and controls), and the patients were further subdivided into severe and mild-moderate groups. Samples from those participants were analyzed for clinical and inflammatory parameter measurements. Genotyping by the Sanger method was performed to stu

A joke is something that is said, written, or done to cause amusement or laughter. It could be a short piece or a long narrative joke, but either way it ends in a punchline, where the joke contains a second conflicting meaning. Sometimes when we read a joke, we understand it directly and fully, but this is not always the case. When a writer writes a joke, he intends to manipulate the reader in a way that the reader doesn’t get the joke at once. He does that by using pun on words or any other word play. We, as listeners to the joke, try to get the message depending mostly on the tone of the voice, in addition to other factors concerning vocabulary and grammar. But as readers of the joke, we need more other factors in order to get

Exposure of reinforced concrete buildings to an accidental fire may result in cracking and loss in the bearing capacity of their major components, columns, beams, and slabs. It is a challenge for structural engineers to develop efficient retrofitting techniques that enable RC slabs to restore their structural integrity, after being exposed to intense fires for a long period of time. Experimental
investigation was carried out on twenty one slab specimens made of self compacting concrete, eighteen of them are retrofitted with CFRP sheets after burning and loading till failure while three of them (which represent control specimens) are retrofitted with CFRP sheet after loading till failure without burning. All slabs had been tested in a

Test results of nine reinforced concrete one way slab with and without lacing reinforcement are reported. The tests were designed to study the effect of the lacing reinforcement on the flexural response of one way slabs. The test parameters were considered is the lacing steel ratios of (0, 0.0025, 0.0045, and 0.0065), flexural steel ratios of (0.0025, 0.0045, and 0.0065) and span to the effective depth ratios of (11, 13, and 16). Two specimens had no lacing reinforcement and the remaining seven specimens had the lacing reinforcement. Four point bending test were carried out, one of the specimens was tested under the static load applied gradually up to failure and the other specimens were tested under repeated load (5 cyc

ABSTRUCT

In This Paper, some semi- parametric spatial models were estimated, these models are, the semi – parametric spatial error model (SPSEM), which suffer from the problem of spatial errors dependence, and the semi – parametric spatial auto regressive model (SPSAR). Where the method of maximum likelihood was used in estimating the parameter of spatial error          ( λ ) in the model (SPSEM), estimated  the parameter of spatial dependence ( ρ ) in the model ( SPSAR ), and using the non-parametric method in estimating the smoothing function m(x) for these two models, these non-parametric methods are; the local linear estimator (LLE) which require finding the smoo

We demonstrate a behavior of laser pulse grows through fiber laser inside and output cavity with a soliton fiber laser based on the multi-wall carbon nanotube saturable absorber (SA), we investigate the effects of a saturable absorber parameter on the mode-locking of a realistic Erbium fiber ring laser. Generalized nonlinear Schrodinger equation including the nonlinear effects as gain dispersion, second anomalous group velocity dispersion (GVD), self phase modulation (SPM), and two photon absorption used to describe pulse evolution. An analytical method has been used to understand and to quantify the role of the SA parameter on the propagation dynamics of pulse laser. We compute the chirp, power, width and phase of the soliton for range

In this work, a comparative analysis for the behavior and pattern of the variations of the IF2 and T Ionospheric indices was conducted for the minimum and maximum years of solar cycles 23 and 24. Also, the correlative relationship between the two ionospheric indices was examined for the seasonal periods spanning from August 1996 to November 2008 for solar cycle 23 and from December 2008 to November 2019 for solar cycle 24. Statistical calculations were performed to compare predicted values with observed values for the selected indices during the tested timeframes. The study's findings revealed that the behavior of the examined indices exhibited almost similar variations throughout the studied timeframe. The seasonal variations were

Finding the shortest route in wireless mesh networks is an important aspect. Many techniques are used to solve this problem like dynamic programming, evolutionary algorithms, weighted-sum techniques, and others. In this paper, we use dynamic programming techniques to find the shortest path in wireless mesh networks due to their generality, reduction of complexity and facilitation of numerical computation, simplicity in incorporating constraints, and their onformity to the stochastic nature of some problems. The routing problem is a multi-objective optimization problem with some constraints such as path capacity and end-to-end delay. Single-constraint routing problems and solutions using Dijkstra, Bellman-Ford, and Floyd-Warshall algorith

In this paper, the effect of wear in the fluid film journal bearings on the dynamic stability of rotor bearing system has been studied depending on the development of new analytical equations for motion, instability threshold speed and steady state harmonic response for rotor with offset disc supported by worn journal bearings. Finite element method had been used for modeling the rotor bearing system. The analytical model is verified by comparing its results with that obtained numerically for a rotor supported on the short bearings. The analytical and numerical results showed good agreement with about 8.5% percentage error in the value of critical speed and about 3.5% percentage error in the value of harmonic response. T