The study aimed to assess the level of ANG‑2 in MM patients at diagnosis and in remission state and elaborate on its correlation with interleukin‑6 (IL‑6) and beta‑2 microglobulin (B2M) levels. Sixty MM patients; 20 newly diagnosed (ND), and 40 patients in remission were included. Twenty healthy individuals were included as a control group. Plasma levels of ANG‑2, B2M, and IL‑6 were tested by enzyme‑lin ked immunosorbent assay. There are significant statistical differences between ND patients and those in remission in hemoglobin, neutrophil count, blood urea, serum creatinine, glomerular filtration rate, B2M, IL6, and ANG‑2 (P = 0.001, 0.033, 0.005, 0.001, 0.001, 0.001, 0.004, and 0.001, respectively). ANG‑2 showed signifi

AbstractBACKGROUND: Some cases of vitiligo require melanocyte transplantation, but these surgical techniques have varying degrees of success. OBJECTIVES: To perform melanocytes transplantion in patients with vitiligo using a new needling micrografting technique. PATIENTS and METHODS: This interventional case study took place at the Department of Dermatology and Venereology at Baghdad Teaching Hospital from December 2010 to September 2011. Twelve patients with vitiligo were included. A split-thickness skin graft was taken from the normal area and cut into micropieces ranging from 0.1 mm to 0.3 mm in diameter. The recipient area was anesthetized, and the micrografts were then implanted into the dermis using the needling technique. The number

Co-composting process can be acquired by combining organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) with sewage sludge (SS) and mature compost (MC) as enhancement and bulking agent to overcome the problems of municipal solid waste and wastewater treatment plants besides the finally produced fertilizer usage for agriculture and horticulture. The effects of different mixture ratios of (OFMSW), (SS) and (MC) on the performance of composting process were investigated in this study. Piles of about 10 kg were prepared by mixing OFMSW, SS and MC in three different ratios (w/w) [OFMSW: SS: MC= 3:1:1, 3:2:1, and 3:3:1]. Results showed that the pile [3:1:1] was most beneficial to composting. The final compost products contained a

Tor (The Onion Routing) network was designed to enable users to browse the Internet anonymously. It is known for its anonymity and privacy security feature against many agents who desire to observe the area of users or chase users’ browsing conventions. This anonymity stems from the encryption and decryption of Tor traffic. That is, the client’s traffic should be subject to encryption and decryption before the sending and receiving process, which leads to delay and even interruption in data flow. The exchange of cryptographic keys between network devices plays a pivotal and critical role in facilitating secure communication and ensuring the integrity of cryptographic procedures. This essential process is time-consuming, which causes del

With the continuous downscaling of semiconductor processes, the growing power density and thermal issues in multicore processors become more and more challenging, thus reliable dynamic thermal management (DTM) is required to prevent severe challenges in system performance. The accuracy of the thermal profile, delivered to the DTM manager, plays a critical role in the efficiency and reliability of DTM, different sources of noise and variations in deep submicron (DSM) technologies severely affecting the thermal data that can lead to significant degradation of DTM performance. In this article, we propose a novel fault-tolerance scheme exploiting approximate computing to mitigate the DSM effects on DTM efficiency. Approximate computing in hardw

An intelligent software defined network (ISDN) based on an intelligent controller can manage and control the network in a remarkable way. In this article, a methodology is proposed to estimate the packet flow at the sensing plane in the software defined network-Internet of Things based on a partial recurrent spike neural network (PRSNN) congestion controller, to predict the next step ahead of packet flow and thus, reduce the congestion that may occur. That is, the proposed model (spike ISDN-IoT) is enhanced with a congestion controller. This controller works as a proactive controller in the proposed model. In addition, we propose another intelligent clustering controller based on an artificial neural network, which operates as a reactive co