Background: COVID-19 has caused a considerable number of hospital admissions in China since December 2019. Many COVID-19 patients experience signs of acute respiratory distress syndrome, and some are even in danger of dying. Objective: to measure the serum levels of D-dimer, Neutrophil-Lymphocyte count ratio (NLR), and neopterin in patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 in Baghdad, Iraq. And to determine the cut-off values (critical values) of these markers for the distinction between the severe patients diagnosed with COVID‐19 and the controls. Materials and methods: In this case-control study, we collect blood from 89 subjects, 45 were severe patients hospitalized in many Baghdad medical centers who were diagnosed with COVID-19 infection, and 44 were apparently healthy subjects as a control. The time of collection is from September 15 th to December 31 th, 2021. The optimal cut-off points (critical values) and prognostic relevance of D-dimer, Neutrophil-Lymphocyte count ratio (NLR), and neopterin were investigated using (ROC) curves analysis. Results: In severe patients hospitalized with COVID-19 the levels of D-dimer, NLR, and neopterin were statistically significantly higher than in control participants (P< 0.005). The D-dimer, NLR, and neopterin tests have areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves of 0.920, 0.90, and 0.74 respectively, and their critical values for the differentiation between the severe patients and control were 0.22 μg/ml, 2.56, and 3.02 nmol/L. Conclusions: D-dimer, NLR, and neopterin levels in sever COVID-19 patients were higher than control, with values of greater than 0.22μg/ml, 2.56 and 3.02nmol/L respectively was linked to a severe COVID-19infection with good sensitivity and selectivity.
This paper presents a hybrid genetic algorithm (hGA) for optimizing the maximum likelihood function ln(L(phi(1),theta(1)))of the mixed model ARMA(1,1). The presented hybrid genetic algorithm (hGA) couples two processes: the canonical genetic algorithm (cGA) composed of three main steps: selection, local recombination and mutation, with the local search algorithm represent by steepest descent algorithm (sDA) which is defined by three basic parameters: frequency, probability, and number of local search iterations. The experimental design is based on simulating the cGA, hGA, and sDA algorithms with different values of model parameters, and sample size(n). The study contains comparison among these algorithms depending on MSE value. One can conc
... Show MoreIn this work, a vertical pulsating heat pipe heat exchanger (PHPHE) was designed for waste heat recovery, exchanging thermal energy between two air streams in a counterflow configuration. The heat exchanger consists of six rows, each row consists of one pulsating heat pipe (PHP), and each PHP has six turns. The working fluid used in the heat pipe was acetone with fill ratios of 50%, 60%, and 70%. The effect of evaporator inlet temperature at 40, 45, and 50°C and air velocity at 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9 m/s on the pulsating heat pipes consisting of three sections- evaporator, condenser, and adiabatic, whose dimensions were 25 x 25 x 10 cm, was studied. At the same time, the condenser temperature was maintained at 26°C. The system’s th
... Show MoreIn the present study, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were prepared using an eco-friendly method synthesized in a single step biosynthetic using leaves aqueous extract of Piper nigrum, Ziziphus spina-christi, and Eucalyptus globulus act as a reducing and capping agents, as a function of volume ratio of aqueous extract(100ppm) to AgNO3 (0.001M), (1: 10, 2: 10, 3: 10). The nanoparticles were characterized using UV-Visible spectra, X-ray diffraction (XRD). The prepared AgNPs showed surface Plasmon resonance centered at 443, 440, and 441 nm for sample prepared using extract Piper nigrum, Ziziphus spina-christi, and Eucalyptus respectively. The XRD pattern showed that the strong intense peaks
Heat exchanger is an important device in the industry for cooling or heating process. To increase the efficiency of heat exchanger, nanofluids are used to enhance the convective heat . transfer relative to the base fluid. - Al2O3/water nanofluid is used as cold stream in the shell and double concentric tube heat exchanger counter current to the hot stream basis oil. These nanoparticles were of particle size of 40 nm and it was mixed with a base fluid (water) at volume
concentrations of 0.002% and 0.004%. The results showed that each of Nusselt number and overall heat transfer coefficient increased as nanofluid concentrations increased. The pressure drop of nanofluid increased slightly than the base fluid because
The aim of the research is to investigate the effect of cold plasma on the bacteria grown on texture of sesame paste in its normal particle and nano particle size. Starting by using the image segmentation process depending on the threshold method, it is used to get rid of the reflection of the glass slides on which the sesame samples are placed. The classification process implemented to separate the sesame paste texture from normal and abnormal texture. The abnormal texture appears when the bacteria has been grown on the sesame paste after being left for two days in the air, unsupervised k-mean classification process used to classify the infected region, the normal region and the treated region. The bacteria treated with cold plasma, t
... Show MorePharmaceuticals have been widely remaining contaminants in wastewater, and diclofenac is the most common pharmaceutical pollutant. Therefore, the removal of diclofenac from aqueous solutions using activated carbon produced by pyrocarbonic acid and microwaves was investigated in this research. Apricot seed powder and pyrophosphoric acid (45 wt%) were selected as raw material and activator respectively, and microwave irradiation technique was used to prepare the activated carbon. The raw material was impregnated in pyrophosphoric acid at 80◦C with an impregnation ratio of 1: 3 (apricot seeds to phosphoric acid), the impregnation time was 4 h, whereas the power of the microwave was 700 watts with a radiation time of 20 min. A series o
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