This study aimed to explore and separate the phytochemicals of the whole plant Conyza canadensis, a naturally growing plant in Iraq, since no phytochemical research was done previously in Iraq. The whole plant of C. canadensis was defatted by maceration in hexane for 24 hours. The defatted plant materials were extracted using Soxhlet apparatus, the aqueous ethanol 85% as a solvent extraction for 9 hours, and fractionated by petroleum ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate, and n-butanol. The petroleum ether, chloroform, and ethyl acetate fractions were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) for their steroids, alkaloids, and polyphenolic (phenolic acids and flavonoids) contents. One alkaloid was isolated from chloroform fractio

Toxoplasmosis is a widespread infection usually caused by Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) parasite. It occurs in humans and other warm blooded animals, causing severe problems. It was found that there is an alteration in the trace elements concentrations levels associated with some human diseases. This study aimed to investigate the changes in the concentrations of some trace elements (Mg, Fe , Zn, and Cu) in the sera of 60 immunocompetent patients with chronic toxoplasmosis and 82 healthy individuals as a control group. Measuring the serum level of seropositivity rate of anti-T. gondii antibodies was done by Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) Kit, while the concentrations of trace elements were measured by absorption spectrophotometry

One hundred thirty four urine samples were collected from diabetic patients during the period from March –November -2014. From these samples there were 62.7% positive samples, women represented 45.3% and men represented 54.7% , some of them were a symptomatic as women represented 60.5% and men represented 58.7%  and some were with clinical symptoms with or without a history of UTI. Hypertension diabetic women represented 45% and men represented 26% .Men suffering from prostate enlargement were represented 35% from the total diabetics .The E.coli isolates were  represented 28.6% from the total cases ,Klebsiella spp  isolates represented 20%, S. aureus   isolates represented 16.7%,P

Snakes, or active contours, are used extensively in computer vision and image processing applications, particularly to locate object boundaries.  In this research, for the segmentation of anatomical structures in medical images three approaches were implemented and compared like (original snake model, distance potential force model and Gradient Vector Flow (GVF) snake model). We used Computed Tomography image (CT) for our experiments.  Our experiments show that original snake model has two problems; first is the limited capture range and the second is the poor convergence. Distance potential force model solved only the first problem of original snake and failed with second problem. Gradient Vector Flow (GVF snake) provides a go

This research is an initial attempt to explore the reality of education and its concept in Islam, and to describe the presence of educational practices in the Arab-Islamic heritage. The importance of this research lies in addressing a set of important issues related to the contemporary Islamic educational system. The research revealed the extent of the need for authentic educational values that draw their reference from the origins of Islam, and it emphasized the analysis of the reality of education in the Islamic world and the identification of its problems and the finding of solutions through a quick and comprehensive look at the diverse contributions of Muslimthinkers to Islamic educational thought, and their active ro

This paper presents a hierarchical two-stage outdoor scene classification method using multi-classes of Support Vector Machine (SVM). In this proposed method, the gist feature of all the images in the database is extracted first to obtain the feature vectors. The image of database is classified into eight outdoor scenes classes, four manmade scenes and four natural scenes. Second, a hierarchical classification is applied, where the first stage classifies all manmade scene classes against all natural scene classes, while the second stage of a hierarchical classification classifies the outputs of first stage into either one of the four manmade scene classes or natural scene classes. Binary SVM and multi-classes SVMs are employed in the fir

This study was designed to highlight the role of Epstein Barr viruses (EBV) as a possible causative effect in multiple sclerosis (MS) through testing the viral load along with both biochemical and immunological parameters in female MS patients. We also aimed at finding the effects of different types of treatment line on the various study aspects. The results of the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) revealed first an increased level of EBV EBNA1IgG IL-17A (96.13±27.60 pg/ml) in sera of female MS patients (0.05±0.01 U/ml, n=50) compared with the control group (n=40). We confirmed this result using real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) which also showed a significantly higher EBV load in MS patients (22.61±12.72 copi

Adhesion (type 1 fimbriae) and host defense avoidance mechanisms (capsule or lipopolysaccharide) have been shown to be prevalent in Escherichia coli isolates associated with urinary tract infections. In this work, 50 uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) isolated from children with urinary tract infections were genotypically characterized by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay. We used two genes; fimH and kpsMTII, both of them previously identified in uropathogenic E.coli (UPEC) isolates. The PCR assay results identified fimH (90.0)% and kpsMTII (72.0)% isolates. In the present study, was also demonstrated that these genes may be included in both or one of them within a single isolate.