A case–control study (80 patients with chronic hepatitis B virus [HBV] infection and 96 controls) was performed to evaluate the association of an IL12A gene variant (rs582537 A/C/G) with HBV infection. Allele G showed a signifcantly lower frequency in patients compared to controls (31.2 vs. 46.9%; probability [p]=0.009; corrected p [pc]=0.027) and was associated with a lower risk of HBV infection (odds ratio [OR]=0.49; 95% confdence interval [CI]=0.29–0.83). A similar lower risk was associated with genotypes CG (17.5 vs. 29.2; OR=0.25; 95% CI=0.08–0.81; p=0.02) and GG (10.0 vs. 16.7; OR=0.25; 95% CI=0.07–0.91; p=0.036), but the pc value was not signifcant (0.12 and 0.126, respec‑ tively). Serum IL35 levels showed signifcant difere

An in-depth experimental study of the matrix effect of antifreeze (ethylene glycol) and water contamination of engine oil through FT-IR spectroscopy. With a comparison of the percent by volume concentration of contaminated fresh 15W-40 engine oil, there appeared to be a noticeable reduction in the O–H stretching signal in the infrared spectrum when ethylene glycol based antifreeze was included as a contaminant. The contaminants of distilled water, a 50/50 mixture of water and commercial ethylene glycol antifreeze, and straight ethylene glycol antifreeze were compared and a signal reduction in the O–H stretch was clearly evident when glycol was present. Doubling the volume of the 50/50 mixture as compared to water alone still res

A reliable and environmental analytical method was developed for the direct determination of tetracycline using flow injection analysis (FIA) and batch procedures with spectrophotometric detection. The developed method is based on the reaction between a chromogenic reagent (vanadium (III) solution) and tetracycline at room temperature and in a neutral medium, resulting in the formation of an intense brown product that shows maximum absorption at 395 nm. The analytical conditions were improved by the application of experimental design. The proposed method was successfully used to analyze samples of commercial medications and verified throughout the concentration ranges of 25–250 and 3–25 µg/mL for both FIA and batch procedures, respecti

The performance of a synergistic combination of electrocoagulation (EC) and electro-oxidation (EO) for oilfield wastewater treatment has been studied. The effect of operative variables such as current density, pH, and electrolyte concentration on the reduction of chemical oxygen demand (COD) was studied and optimized based on Response Surface Methodology (RSM). The results showed that the current density had the highest impact on the COD removal with a contribution of 64.07% while pH, NaCl addition and other interactions affects account for only 34.67%. The optimized operating parameters were a current density of 26.77 mA/cm2 and a pH of 7.6 with no addition of NaCl which results in a COD removal efficiency of 93.43% and a specific energy c

Students’ feedback is crucial for educational institutions to assess the performance of their teachers, most opinions are expressed in their native language, especially for people in south Asian regions. In Pakistan, people use Roman Urdu to express their reviews, and this applied in the education domain where students used Roman Urdu to express their feedback. It is very time-consuming and labor-intensive process to handle qualitative opinions manually. Additionally, it can be difficult to determine sentence semantics in a text that is written in a colloquial style like Roman Urdu. This study proposes an enhanced word embedding technique and investigates the neural word Embedding (Word2Vec and Glove) to determine which perfo

The aim of this study is to know the effect of different percentages of chitosan added to drinking water on the weight and quality of quail meat, physical anatomy in terms of (the body of the long carcass, the girth of the chest, the length of the thigh bones, the thigh racket, the fullness of the chest), chemical analysis (protein, moisture, fat and ash) and sensory evaluation of quail meat. It was purchased 320 Iraqi-origin birds of quail and one day old. Chicks were randomly distributed to three equal groups' treatments and treated with chitosan and added to the drinking water: the first treatment (0.1 gm./L water only as a control treatment), the second treatment (0.2 gm./L of chitosan was added to the drinking water) and the

This study aimed at recognizing the impact of empowerment of human resources strategy on enhancing the financial performance in working banks in Jordan, the axes of the strategy were: informative sharing, free and independence, working teams, and organizational power. To achieve the objective of the study, a questionnaire is designed and distributed on the sample of the study, which represented 60 employees of Banks. After analyzing the data by using SPSS, the study resulted that there is positive impact of empowerment of human resources strategy on enhancing the financial performance in working banks in Jordan. It suggested that the working banks in Jordan should establish database, and to create working teams.

In this work, a composite material was prepared from Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) with different weight percent of grain and calcinations kaolin at temperature of (850^oC) using single screw extruder and a mixing machine operated at a temperature between (190-200^oC). Some of mechanical and physical properties such as tensile strength, tensile strength at break, Young modulus, and elongation at break, shore hardness and water absorption were determined at different weight fraction of filler (0, 2, 7, 10 and 15%). It was found that the addition of filler increases the modulus of elasticity, elongation at break, shore hardness and impact strength; on other hand, it decreases the tensile strength and tensile strength