The diagnosis of acute appendicitis (AA) sometimes is illusive and the accompanying clinical and laboratory manifestations cannot be used for definitive diagnosis. Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic value of neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in detection of AA. Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional study that included a total of 80 adult patients with AA and 62 age- and gender-matched patients with abdominal pain due to causes other than AA. Three milliliter of peripheral blood were collected from each participant. The NLR was calculated by dividing the absolute neutrophil count by the absolute lymphocyte count. Receiver operating characteristic curve was used to assess the diagnostic value of NLR in detection of AA cases. Results: Mean NLR in AA patients was 7.18 ± 2.11 compared with 2.68 ± 1.08 in patients with abdominal pain due to causes other than AA with a highly significant difference. The area under the curve was 0.916 (95%confidence interval = 0.842–0.989), P < 0.001. The sensitivity and specificity of the test at NLR = 4.45 were 90% and 83%, respectively. Conclusions: NLR is an easy, inexpensive test that can be used for AA detection. This test is more sensitive and more specific than either total white blood cell or absolute neutrophil count
A biconical antenna has been developed for ultra-wideband sensing. A wide impedance bandwidth of around 115% at bandwidth 3.73-14 GHz is achieved which shows that the proposed antenna exhibits a fairly sensitive sensor for microwave medical imaging applications. The sensor and instrumentation is used together with an improved version of delay and sum image reconstruction algorithm on both fatty and glandular breast phantoms. The relatively new imaging set-up provides robust reconstruction of complex permittivity profiles especially in glandular phantoms, producing results that are well matched to the geometries and composition of the tissues. Respectively, the signal-to-clutter and the signal-to-mean ratios of the improved method are consis
... Show MoreThis project sought to fabricate a flexible gas sensor based on a short functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes (f-MWCNTs) network for nitrogen dioxide gas detection. The network was prepared by filtration from the suspension (FFS) method and modified by coating with a layer of polypyrrole conductive polymer (PPy) prepared by the oxidative chemical polymerization to improve the properties of the network. The structural, optical, and morphological properties of the f-MWCNTs and f-MWCNTs/PPy network were studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourie-transform infrared (FTIR), with an AFM (atomic force microscopy). XRD proved that the structure of f-MWCNTs is unaffected by the synthesis procedure. The FTIR spectra verified the existence o
... Show MoreNatural honey is well known for its therapeutic value and has been used in traditional medicine of different cultures throughout the world. The aim of this study was to investigate the anti-inflammatory effect of Malaysian Gelam honey in inflammation-induced rats. Paw edema was induced by a subplantar injection of 1% carrageenan into the rat right hind paw. Rats were treated with the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) Indomethacin (10 mg/kg, p.o.) or Gelam honey at different doses (1 or 2 g/kg, p.o.). The increase in footpad thickness was considered to be edema, which was measured using a dial caliper. Plasma and paw tissue were collected to analyze the production of inflammatory mediators, such as NO, PGE2
... Show MoreIntrusion detection systems (IDS) are useful tools that help security administrators in the developing task to secure the network and alert in any possible harmful event. IDS can be classified either as misuse or anomaly, depending on the detection methodology. Where Misuse IDS can recognize the known attack based on their signatures, the main disadvantage of these systems is that they cannot detect new attacks. At the same time, the anomaly IDS depends on normal behaviour, where the main advantage of this system is its ability to discover new attacks. On the other hand, the main drawback of anomaly IDS is high false alarm rate results. Therefore, a hybrid IDS is a combination of misuse and anomaly and acts as a solution to overcome the dis
... Show MoreBackground: Urinary tract infections (UTIs) and their complications such as Bladder cancer (Bl. C.) are a health growing problem worldwide. Objective: To shed light on this subject, present study was done to investigate relationship between recurrent urinary tract infection (RUTI) due to Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Bl. C.Type of study: Cross-sectional study. Methods: This study included 130 patients with RUTI, 50 patients with Bl. C. and 50 control of both sexes (aged 7-85 years) attending Al-Zahra Teaching Hospital in Al-Kut/Wassit governorate and Al-Harery Teaching Hospital of specialized surgeries/Baghdad. The patients were divided into two groups: the first group (n=130) included those who were suffering from recurrent UTI without
... Show MoreA total of 200 clinical samples included Burns and Wounds infections were collected from Baghdad Governorate. Results showed that rate all isolates of P. mirabilis was 31(15.5%) and rate of Burns infections was 14 (45%) and rate of wounds infection 17 (55%). Where was diagnostic based on conventional biochemical tests and confirmed by the Vitek-2 Compact system and the specific primer of the16SrRNA gene, the ability of bacterial isolates to biofilm formation to be studied. It's considered an important virulence factor in Incidence of diseases and play important role in increasing resistance to antibiotic of encased bacteria, by two methods Congo Red Agar method and Microtiter Plate method. The Congo Red Agar method showed that most isolates
... Show MoreBeyond the immediate content of speech, the voice can provide rich information about a speaker's demographics, including age and gender. Estimating a speaker's age and gender offers a wide range of applications, spanning from voice forensic analysis to personalized advertising, healthcare monitoring, and human-computer interaction. However, pinpointing precise age remains intricate due to age ambiguity. Specifically, utterances from individuals at adjacent ages are frequently indistinguishable. Addressing this, we propose a novel, end-to-end approach that deploys Mozilla's Common Voice dataset to transform raw audio into high-quality feature representations using Wav2Vec2.0 embeddings. These are then channeled into our self-attentio
... Show MoreThe purpose of this study was to find out the connection between the water parameters that were examined in the laboratory and the water index acquired from the examination of the satellite image of the study area. This was accomplished by analysing the Landsat-8 satellite picture results as well as the geographic information system (GIS). The primary goal of this study is to develop a model for the chemical and physical characteristics of the Al-Abbasia River in Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf Governorate. The water parameters employed in this investigation are as follows: (PH, EC, TDS, TSS, Na, Mg, K, SO4, Cl, and NO3). To collect the samples, ten sampling locations were identified, and the satellite image was obtained on the
... Show MoreCytokines are signaling molecules between inflammatory cells that play a significant role in the pathogenesis of a disease. Among these cytokines are interleukins (ILs) 17A and 33, and accordingly, the current case-control study sought to investigate the role of each of the two cytokines in the risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS). Sixty-eight relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) Iraqi patients and twenty healthy individuals (control group) were enrolled. Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits were used to determine serum levels of IL-17A and IL-33. Results revealed that IL-17A and IL-33 levels were significantly higher in MS patients than in controls (14.1 ± 4.5 vs. 7.5 ± 3.8 pg/mL; p < 0.001 and 65.3 ± 16
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