Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive disorder that affects cognitive brain functions and starts many years before its clinical manifestations. A biomarker that provides a quantitative measure of changes in the brain due to AD in the early stages would be useful for early diagnosis of AD, but this would involve dealing with large numbers of people because up to 50% of dementia sufferers do not receive formal diagnosis. Thus, there is a need for accurate, low-cost, and easy to use biomarkers that could be used to detect AD in its early stages. Potentially, electroencephalogram (EEG) based biomarkers can play a vital role in early diagnosis of AD as they can fulfill these needs. This is a cross-sectional study that aims to demonstrate the usefulness of EEG complexity measures in early AD diagnosis. We have focused on the three complexity methods which have shown the greatest promise in the detection of AD, Tsallis entropy (TsEn), Higuchi Fractal Dimension (HFD), and Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZC) methods. Unlike previous approaches, in this study, the complexity measures are derived from EEG frequency bands (instead of the entire EEG) as EEG activities have significant association with AD and this has led to enhanced performance. The results show that AD patients have significantly lower TsEn, HFD, and LZC values for specific EEG frequency bands and for specific EEG channels and that this information can be used to detect AD with a sensitivity and specificity of more than 90%.
Most of the studies conducted in the past decades focused on the effect of interest rates and exchange rates on domestic investment under the assumption that the independent variables have the same effect on the dependent variable, but there were limited studies that investigated the unequal effects of changes in interest rates and exchange rates, both positive and negative, on domestic investment. This study used a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model to assess the unequal effects of the real interest rate and real exchange rate variables on domestic investment in Egypt for the period 1976 - 2020. The results revealed that positive and negative shocks for both exchange rates have unequal effects on
... Show MorePurpose: To identify the size of the food gap for the main agricultural products and crops in Iraq, which reflects to us the extent to which agricultural production in particular and the agricultural sector in general have declined.Theoretical framework: The theoretical side of the research dealt with the definition of self-sufficiency and the food gap, as well as identifying the reality of agricultural production in Iraq during the study period, as well as the reality of the food gap for the most important agricultural, plant and animal products.Design/methodology/approach: In reviewing the research problem, the researcher adopted the method of deductive and descriptive analysis based on the presentation and detail of official data
... Show MoreIn this paper we use the Markov Switching model to investigate the link between the level of Iraqi inflation and its uncertainty; forth period 1980-2010 we measure inflation uncertainty as the variance of unanticipated inflation. The results ensure there are a negative effect of inflation level on inflation uncertainty and all so there are a positive effect of inflation uncertainty on inflation level.  
... Show MoreA batch and flow injection (FI) spectrophotometric methods are described for the determination of barbituric acid in aqueous and urine samples. The method is based on the oxidative coupling reaction of barbituric acid with 4-aminoantipyrine and potassium iodate to form purple water soluble stable product at λ 510 nm. Good linearity for both methods was obtained ranging from 2 to 60 μg mL−1, 5–100 μg mL−1 for batch and FI techniques, respectively. The limit of detection (signal/noise = 3) of 0.45 μg mL−1 for batch method and 0.48 μg mL−1 for FI analysis was obtained. The proposed methods were applied successfully for the determination of barbituric acid in tap water, river water, and urine samples with good recoveries of 99.92
... Show MoreThis study has been accomplished by testing three different models to determine rocks type, pore throat radius, and flow units for Mishrif Formation in West Qurna oilfield in Southern Iraq based on Mishrif full diameter cores from 20 wells. The three models that were used in this study were Lucia rocks type classification, Winland plot was utilized to determine the pore throat radius depending on the mercury injection test (r35), and (FZI) concepts to identify flow units which enabled us to recognize the differences between Mishrif units in these three categories. The study of pore characteristics is very significant in reservoir evaluation. It controls the storage mechanism and reservoir fluid prope
The ability of four local fungal isolates for extracellular laccase production has been tested with five grams 1:1(w/v) humidified sawdust as substrate in mineral salt medium. After 21 day of incubation at 25±1 ? C and using one mycelial plug (5mm), higher level of laccase activity (0.15U/ml) and specific activity (15U/mg) were observed by Pleurotus ostreatus in comparison with other fungal isolates. The results of optimum conditions for laccase production from selected isolate showed that, the maximum laccase activity (0.55U/ml) and specific activity (55U/mg) were obtained at moisture ratio 1:3 (w/v), using 3 mycelial plugs (5 mm), after 15 days incubation period at 25±1 ? C. The results of phenol degradation by crud laccase revealed th
... Show MoreIt included the introduction to the research and its importance, as the knee joint is one of the important joints in the human body that are susceptible to injury, and among these injuries is the roughness of the knee that occurs as a result of weakness and imbalance in the work of the quadriceps muscle, so its treatment is through rehabilitation exercises to treat weakness and gain flexibility and strength.Hence the importance of the research by developing rehabilitation exercises with different resistances in the water medium and restoring flexibility and muscular strength for patients with knee roughness for ages from 30-40 years, and the experimental method was used to solve the research problem, and the research sample included (6) of
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