Objectives: Dickkopf-1 (DKK-1) is WNT/b-catenin pathway antagonist which plays a detrimental role in the development of diabetic retinopathy (DR). This research aimed to assess serum DKK-1 levels in diabetic patients who have and have not developed DR and, compare them with the control subjects finding out whether we can use it as an indicator for DR early diagnosis and to find out which one of the widely used two groups of antidiabetic treatments had the greater effect on this biomarker and hence on the progression of DR. Methods: The study participants were divided into two subgroups: First, 70 patients (36 male, 34 female) with type 2 diabetes mellitus, among them 35 patients diagnosed with DR and 35 with no evidence of DR, and s

The inverse kinematics of redundant manipulators has infinite solutions by using conventional methods, so that, this work presents applicability of intelligent tool (artificial neural network ANN) for finding one desired solution from these solutions. The inverse analysis and trajectory planning of a three link redundant planar robot have been studied in this work using a proposed dual neural networks model (DNNM), which shows a predictable time decreasing in the training session. The effect of the number of the training sets on the DNNM output and the number of NN layers have been studied. Several trajectories have been implemented using point to point trajectory planning algorithm with DNNM and the result shows good accuracy of the end

Caryl Churchill's Top Girls (1982) reveals how women have achieved a point of strength and independence in their battle to face men's oppression throughout history. Churchill has replicated recent transitions in the 1980s and 1990s in works that depict these movements' central concerns and contradictions as they change. Similarly, her theater is a result of many problems and shifts in hegemonic modes of production during this time. This paper traces the achievements of the major character of Top Girls, Marlene, in her way of life and her handling of the struggles of other women around her. Because of this strength, Marlene is compared to the British Prime Minister, Thatcher. Therefore, this paper will shed light on the term of T

In this paper, we characterize normal composition operators induced by holomorphic self-map , when and .Moreover, we study other related classes of operators, and then we generalize these results to polynomials of degree n.

he assignment model represents a mathematical model that aims at expressing an important problem facing enterprises and companies in the public and private sectors, which are characterized by ensuring their activities, in order to take the appropriate decision to get the best allocation of tasks for machines or jobs or workers on the machines that he owns in order to increase profits or reduce costs and time As this model is called multi-objective assignment because it takes into account the factors of time and cost together and hence we have two goals for the assignment problem, so it is not possible to solve by the usual methods and has been resorted to the use of multiple programming The objectives were to solve the problem of

Writing plays an effective role in developing one's thinking and
enhancing Learning. It is, in fact, a means of widening one's own views about
the world for the numerous uses that it can serve (Samuel, 1988:28).
In regard to the unquestionable significance of writing in the teaching –
Learning process, the traditional approach seems to be far from being able to
put such significance into practice. Traditionalists give priority to formulating
students' ideas before using prescribed rhetorical framework and then
submitting the written product for grading. Emphasis is, therefore, limited to the
prewriting stage where a certain topic is explored, and the role of the teacher is
confined to assigning the topic and

A piezoelectric cantilever beam with a tip mass at its free end is a common energy harvester configuration. This article introduces a new principle of designing such a harvester that increases the generated power without changing the resonance frequency of the harvester: the attraction force between two permanent magnets is used to add stiffness to the system. This magnetic stiffening counters the effect of the tip mass on the efficient operation frequency. Five set-ups incorporating piezoelectric bimorph cantilevers of the same type in different mechanical configurations are compared theoretically and experimentally to investigate the feasibility of this principle: theoretical and experimental results show that magnetically stiffened harve

The research include a pulsed Nd: YAG Laser with (300µs) pulse duration in the TEM00 mode at (1.06µm) wavelength for energies between (0.5-3) J was employed to drill Brass material which is use in industrial applications. The process of drill was assisted by an electric field. This resulted in an increase in the hole aspect ratio by the value (45%) and decrease in the hole taper by the value (25%) of its value under ordinary drilling conditions using the same input energy.

This research aims at investigating pupils’ ability in using discourse markers which are identified in the English textbooks of secondary schools. Four texts are chosen from third intermediate class. The four texts are short stories of different topics.                                                  

        This research hypothesizes that there are no statistical significant differences among Iraqi intermediate pupils’ ability in using textual