Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive airflow limitation that is preventable but not curable. It is associated with persistent symptoms that cause a considerable burden on individual productivity at work, and daily activities, and reduced quality of life, also burdening the healthcare system and society. Objectives: The study aims to measure the burden of COPD on patients in terms of daily activities and work productivity. It also seeks to investigate some inflammatory biomarkers' levels and their correlation with selected outcomes. Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional study on 120 stable COPD patients who were diagnosed and treated according to the GOLD guidelines at Kirkuk General Hospital's chest and Internal Medicine consultation clinics, and in private internist clinics in Kirkuk City, Iraq between January and April 2023. The Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire (WPAI-COPD) measured the Burden of COPD. The symptom burden was assessed by the COPD assessment test (CAT). The level of IL-6 monoclonal antibodies was measured via a Roche Cobas 6000 analyzer and TNF-α using the ELISA sandwich technique. All these devices and machines were authorized by the Ministry of Health, Iraq. Results: The mean age was (54.1 ± 8.12) years, 62.5% being males and 37.5% being females; 41.7% were public sector employees, and 39.2% were self-employed. Due to COPD, the overall work loss was (45.9±18.91) days, the mean percentage of absenteeism was (10.9% ± 12.31%), activity impairment was (47.5% ±17.79%) among all patients, presenteeism was (40.8 ± 15.05%,) and COPD-related retirees were 14.2% of the study group. The mean CAT score (19.3±5.63) was high and the most troubling symptom among patients was chest tightness. WPAI-COPD scores were higher in older age and longer disease duration. The levels of biomarkers were above the reference ranges, the mean IL-6 level was (69.4 ± 35.29) pg/ml, and the mean TNF-α was (72.3 ± 22.45) pg/ ml. Conclusions: COPD patients exhibit a disease burden in terms of productivity loss at work and activity impairment that increases with aging and disease duration. COPD patients with low BMI are more prone to a decline in lung functions and to worse symptoms.
This paper describes a practical study on the impact of learning's partners, Bluetooth Broadcasting system, interactive board, Real – time response system, notepad, free internet access, computer based examination, and interaction classroom, etc, had on undergraduate student performance, achievement and involving with lectures. The goal of this study is to test the hypothesis that the use of such learning techniques, tools, and strategies to improve student learning especially among the poorest performing students. Also, it gives some kind of practical comparison between the traditional way and interactive way of learning in terms of lectures time, number of tests, types of tests, student's scores, and student's involving with lectures
... Show More
Early detection of eye diseases can forestall visual deficiency and vision loss. There are several types of human eye diseases, for example, diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, arteriosclerosis, and hypertension. Diabetic retinopathy (DR) which is brought about by diabetes causes the retinal vessels harmed and blood leakage in the retina. Retinal blood vessels have a huge job in the detection and treatment of different retinal diseases. Thus, retinal vasculature extraction is significant to help experts for the finding and treatment of systematic diseases. Accordingly, early detection and consequent treatment are fundamental for influenced patients to protect their vision. The aim of this paper is to detect blood vessels from
... Show MoreThe use of sugarcane molasses (SCM) as a sustainable stabilizing agent for geomaterials, particularly granular subbase soils, has recently attracted growing attention as an alternative to traditional stabilization methods employing cement, lime, or bitumen, which are often associated with high costs and environmental concerns. This study presents a mechanistic–experimental evaluation of SCM for stabilizing granular subbase materials at dosages of 2.5%, 5%, 7.5%, and 10% by weight of dry granular material. A comprehensive testing program was conducted, including compaction characteristics, California Bearing Ratio (CBR), resilient modulus (Mr), permanent deformation under repeated loading, optical microscopy, and FTIR spectroscopy.
... Show MoreDiscrete Racah polynomials (DRPs) are considered essential for several applications such as approximation theory, quantum physics, and digital signal processing. However, the computation of high-order DRPs presents significant numerical and computational challenges. Even though the recent advancements in algorithms have improved numerical stability, the inherently sequential nature of these algorithms continues to be a bottleneck for large-scale implementations. This paper proposes a new multithreading-based algorithm for computing the DRP coefficients. The proposed algorithm is designed to accelerate the computation of high-order DRPs by considering the advantages of the independence of different tasks and the ability to process mu
... Show MoreThis study aimed to incorporate hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (nHA) or amorphous calcium phosphate nanoparticles (nACP) into a self-etch primer (SEP) to develop a simplified orthodontic bonding system with remineralizing and enamel preserving properties.
nHA and nACP were incorporated into a commercial SEP (Transbond™ plus) in 7% weight ratio and compared with the plain SEP as a control. Shear bond strengths (SBS), enamel damage, and adhesive remnant index (ARI) scores were evaluated at 24 h
Background: Determination of local bone mineral density (BMD) immediately after implant insertion play an important role in implant success rate, may offer comprehensive description of the bone, and give enough information to the surgeon prior to implant insertion and at follow up status. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the changes of local bone density in the dental implant recipient sites by using computerized tomography. Material and method: The sample consisted of (20) dental implants recipient sites, bone density assessment was done twice, immediately after implants insertion and after six months. Results: The mean HU of the bone around the implant insertion site, immediately after implant placement was 552.28 HU, and inc
... Show MoreThis research presents and discuss the results of experimental investigation carried out on geogrids model to study the behavior of geogrid in the loose sandy soil. The effect of location eccentricity, depth of first layer of reinforcement, vertical spacing, number and type of reinforcement layers have been investigated. The results indicated that the percentage of bearing improvement a bout (22 %) at number of reinforced layers N=1 and about (47.5%) at number of reinforced layers N=2 for different Eccentricity values when depth ratio and vertical spacing between layers are (0.5B and 0.75B) respectively
The catalytic cracking of three feeds of extract lubricating oil, that produced as a by-product from the process of furfural extraction of lubricating oil base stock in AL-Dura refinery at different operating condition, were carried out at a fixed bed laboratory reactor. The initial boiling point for these feeds was 140 ºC for sample (1), 86 ºC for sample (2) and 80 ºC for sample (3). The catalytic cracking processes were carried out at temperature range 325-400 ºC and initially at atmospheric pressure after 30 minutes over 9.88 % HY-zeolite catalyst load. The comparison between the conversion at different operating conditions of catalytic cracking processes indicates that a high yield was obtained at 375°C, according to gasoline pr
... Show MoreA Tonido cloud server provides a private cloud storage solution and synchronizes customers and employees with the required cloud services over the enterprise. Generally, access to any cloud services by users is via the Internet connection, which can face some problems, and then users may encounter in accessing these services due to a weak Internet connection or heavy load sometimes especially with live video streaming applications overcloud. In this work, flexible and inexpensive proposed accessing methods are submitted and implemented concerning real-time applications that enable users to access cloud services locally and regionally. Practically, to simulate our network connection, we proposed to use the Raspberry-pi3 m
... Show More