AbstractOBJECTIVES: To evaluate the long-term remission efficacy and safety of isotretinoin in the treatment of Behcet's disease (BD). PATIENTS and METHODS: This single-blind, controlled therapeutic study was conducted in the Department of Dermatology and Venereology at Baghdad Teaching Hospital from February 2011 to January 2012. Thirty patients with BD were included in this work. Each patient received isotretinoin 20 mg orally once daily for 3 months. They were assessed at week 2 and then monthly depending on the Clinical Manifestation Index (CMI) and to record any side effects. At week 12, isotretinoin was stopped and patients were given placebo therapy in a form of glucose capsules for another 3 months. RESULTS: Thirty patients were tre

This paper aims to study Antonia's character and  her mannish behavioral  transition  throughout the novel entitled My Antonia. Willa presents Antonia who shows her resolution and courage in facing and dealing with personal dilemmas and social circumstances. Willa portrays Antonia, who struggles in the new society and culture by working hard in changing the salty land of Nebreska and her destiny . Working in salty land day and night forces Antonia to lose her tender behavior and her  beauty as a woman is changed too. She achieves her goals to live with her family in a new place with a dignity and respect though she looks like a man in her strength and body built . Willa Cather tries to explain that the major&

Although its wide utilization in microbial cultures, the one factor-at-a-time method, failed to find the true optimum, this is due to the interaction between optimized parameters which is not taken into account. Therefore, in order to find the true optimum conditions, it is necessary to repeat the one factor-at-a-time method in many sequential experimental runs, which is extremely time-consuming and expensive for many variables. This work is an attempt to enhance bioactive yellow pigment production by Streptomyces thinghirensis based on a statistical design. The yellow pigment demonstrated inhibitory effects against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus and was characterized by UV-vis spectroscopy which showed lambda maximum of

The aim of the research is to identify the effectiveness of the educational pillars strategy based on Vygotsky's theory in mathematical achievement and information processing of first-grade intermediate students. In pursuit of the research objectives, the experimental method was used, and the quasi-experimental design was used for two equivalent groups, one control group taught traditionally and the other experi-mental taught according to the educational pillars strategy. The research sample consisted of (66) female students from the first intermediate grade, who were inten-tionally chosen after ensuring their equivalence, taking into account several factors, most notably chronological age and their level of mathematics, and they we

In this article, we developed a new loss function, as the simplification of linear exponential loss function (LINEX) by weighting LINEX function. We derive a scale parameter, reliability and the hazard functions in accordance with upper record values of the Lomax distribution (LD). To study a small sample behavior performance of the proposed loss function using a Monte Carlo simulation, we make a comparison among maximum likelihood estimator, Bayesian estimator by means of LINEX loss function and Bayesian estimator using square error loss (SE) function. The consequences have shown that a modified method is the finest for valuing a scale parameter, reliability and hazard functions.

This paper introduces a generalization sequence of positive and linear operators of integral type based on two parameters to improve the order of approximation. First, the simultaneous approximation is studied and a Voronovskaja-type asymptotic formula is introduced. Next, an error of the estimation in the simultaneous approximation is found. Finally, a numerical example to approximate a test function and its first derivative of this function is given for some values of the parameters. 

Currently, the prominence of automatic multi document summarization task belongs to the information rapid increasing on the Internet. Automatic document summarization technology is progressing and may offer a solution to the problem of information overload. 

Automatic text summarization system has the challenge of producing a high quality summary. In this study, the design of generic text summarization model based on sentence extraction has been redirected into a more semantic measure reflecting individually the two significant objectives: content coverage and diversity when generating summaries from multiple documents as an explicit optimization model. The proposed two models have been then coupled and def

Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) is a popular method for estimation the number of sources impinging on an array of sensors, which is a problem of great interest in several applications. The performance of AIC degrades under low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). This paper is concerned with the development and application of quadrature mirror filters (QMF) for improving the performance of AIC. A new system is proposed to estimate the number of sources by applying AIC to the outputs of filter bank consisting quadrature mirror filters (QMF). The proposed system can estimate the number of sources under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

In recent years, there has been expanding development in the vehicular part and the number of vehicles moving on the road in all the sections of the country. Vehicle number plate identification based on image processing is a dynamic area of this work; this technique is used for security purposes such as tracking of stolen cars and access control to restricted areas. The License Plate Recognition System (LPRS) exploits a digital camera to capture vehicle plate numbers is used as input to the proposed recognition system. Basically, the developing system is consist of three phases, vehicle license plate localization, character segmentation, and character recognition, the License Plate (LP) detection is presented using canny