The present study aims to investigate the seroprevalence rate of Toxoplasma gondii infection and its relation to some demographic factors among males in Duhok province/Iraq. A total of 424 random blood samples were collected from the male population of different ages (18-60) years and different social-economic classes. Out of 424 samples examined, 108 (25.47%) were seropositive to the anti- T. gondii antibodies; 88 (20.75%) were found seropositive for IgG, while 20 (4.72%) samples were seropositive for IgM. Regarding occupation, the highest percentage for chronic toxoplasmosis was reported in workers followed by policemen and pensioners at rates of 23.96%, 23.6%, and 23.07%, respectively. The age group 18-30 y

The background subtraction is a leading technique adopted for detecting the moving objects in video surveillance systems. Various background subtraction models have been applied to tackle different challenges in many surveillance environments. In this paper, we propose a model of pixel-based color-histogram and Fuzzy C-means (FCM) to obtain the background model using cosine similarity (CS) to measure the closeness between the current pixel and the background model and eventually determine the background and foreground pixel according to a tuned threshold. The performance of this model is benchmarked on CDnet2014 dynamic scenes dataset using statistical metrics. The results show a better performance against the state-of the art

In individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), the cannabinoid receptor 1 (CNR1) gene polymorphism has been linked to diabetic nephropathy (DN). Different renal disorders, including DN, have been found to alter cannabinoid (CB) receptor expression and activation. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the relationship between CNR1 rs1776966256 and rs1243008337 genetic variants and the risk of developing DN in Iraqi patients with T2DM. The study included 100 patients with T2DM, divided into two groups: 50 with DN and 50 without DN. Genotyping of CNR1 rs1776966256 and rs1243008337 polymorphisms was conducted using PCR in DN patients and control samples. The distribution of rs1776966256 and rs1243008337 genotypes and alleles bet

The spray quality of two spraying agents with different physical properties was investigated under laboratory conditions to find whether the measurement of deposited drops could be affected by spraying those agents. The first spraying agent Moddus, which is a plant growth regulator, has a surface tension of 28 mN m-1 with almost half the value of the second spraying agent Kelpak (58 mN m-1). A mini boom sprayer containing three flat fan nozzles (XR 11003) was used in the test with three traveling speeds (4.74, 5.42 and 8.13 km. h-1). The test was performed to evaluate the quality of spray drops (spray coverage, spray density and stains diameter) after they were deposited on water sensitive papers (WSP). The results showed a higher ability o

Fullerene nanotube was synthesized in this research by pyrolysis of plastic waste Polypropylene (PP) at 1000 ° C for two hours in a closed reactor made from stainless steel using molybdenum oxide (MoO₃) as a catalyst and nitrogen gas. The resultant carbon was purified and characterized by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD). The surface characteristics of C₆₀ nanotubes were observed with the Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The carbon is evenly spread and has the highest concentration from SEM-EDX characterization. The result of XRD and FESEM shows that C₆₀ nanotubes are present in Nano figures, synthesized at 1000 ° C and with pyrolysis tempera

Blood samples of One hundred and twenty patients from different hospitals in Baghdad infected with hydatidosis in different sites of the body (Liver, Lung, multiorgans and kidney) were collected for this study. On the other hand, 30 healthy individuals were included as a control group. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of this disease on the serum protein profile of the patients using electrophoresis. The results revealed four different protein banding patterns with difference in number of bands and their molecular weights in comparison to the control group, and these differences depended on the site of infection. However the data showed a presence of the same band in all patients with different site of infection.

Rheumatoid arthritis is one of the common chronic disease, which lead to great disability and chronic pain, and has a main adverse economic and social effect upon patients. The reason for the addition of quality of life as a pointer for health outcome result is attributed to the affectability of this measure for the evaluation of patient's health status after taken treatment and its health outcome. The purpose of the current study was to assess quality of life among a sample of Iraqi patients with rheumatoid arthritis and to determine the possible association between health’s related quality of life and some patient-certain factors. This study is a cross-sectional study carried out on 250 already diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis pat

This work deals with determination of optimum conditions of direct diffusion bonding welding of austenitic stainlesssteel type AISI 304L with Oxygen Free High Conductivity (OFHC) pure copper grade (C10200) in vacuum atmosphere of (1.5 *10^-5 mbr.). Mini tab (response surface) was applied for optimizing the influence of diffusion bonding parameters (temperature, time and applied load) on the bonding joints characteristics and the empirical relationship was evaluated which represents the effect of each parameter of the process. The yield strength of diffusion bonded joint was equal to 153 MPa and the efficiency of joint was equal to 66.5% as compared with hard drawn copper. The diffusion zone reveals high microhardness than coppe