BACKGROUND: Transverse fractures of the patella are important fractures with a wide variety of subtypes, the common incidence in the age group of 20–50 years. Surgical interference aims to achieve a perfect alignment of the joint surface, in addition to rigid fixation of the fracture for early re-habitation and early movement to retain the extensor mechanism of the knee joint. AIM: The aim of this study was to compare the radiological and functional outcomes of the displaced transverse patella fracture in adult patients treated by ORIF using tension band wiring versus cannulated screws with wiring. METHODS: A prospective analytic comparative study was conducted in Al-Kindy Teaching Hospital/Baghdad/Iraq for 18 months from Apr

Background: This in vitro study compares a novel calcium-phosphate etchant paste to conventional 37% phosphoric acid gel for bonding metal and ceramic brackets by evaluating the shear bond strength, remnant adhesive and enamel damage following water storage, acid challenge and fatigue loading. Material and Methods: Metal and ceramic brackets were bonded to 240 extracted human premolars using two enamel conditioning protocols: conventional 37% phosphoric acid (PA) gel (control), and an acidic calcium-phosphate (CaP) paste. The CaP paste was prepared from β-tricalcium phosphate and monocalcium phosphate monohydrate powders mixed with 37% phosphoric acid solution, and the resulting phase was confirmed using FTIR. The bonded premolars were exp

This study aimed at evaluating the torsional capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) beams externally wrapped with fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) materials. An analytical model was described and used as a new computational procedure based on the softened truss model (STM) to predict the torsional behavior of RC beams strengthened with FRP. The proposed analytical model was validated with the existing experimental data for rectangular sections strengthened with FRP materials and considering torque-twist relationship and crack pattern at failure. The confined concrete behavior, in the case of FRP wrapping, was considered in the constitutive laws of concrete in the model. Then, an efficient algorithm was developed in MATLAB environment t

ABSTRACTBackground: In Medical ethics education, improving medical student’s attitudes toward respecting the right of patients is an essential task. The medical students’ attitude has been affected by social, educational and personality background factors.Objective: To investigate medical student’s attitudes regarding medical ethics courses.Method: The study was conducted in Al-Kindy College of Medicine on academic year (2013 -2014) for the period from January to September. A cross- sectional study design was adopted with a self- administered questionnaire form distributed to medical students in the 5th-6th under graduate grades. The questionnaire consisted of 31 items relevant to student’s opinion about attitudes concerning ethi

<p>In combinatorial testing development, the fabrication of covering arrays is the key challenge by the multiple aspects that influence it. A wide range of combinatorial problems can be solved using metaheuristic and greedy techniques. Combining the greedy technique utilizing a metaheuristic search technique like hill climbing (HC), can produce feasible results for combinatorial tests. Methods based on metaheuristics are used to deal with tuples that may be left after redundancy using greedy strategies; then the result utilization is assured to be near-optimal using a metaheuristic algorithm. As a result, the use of both greedy and HC algorithms in a single test generation system is a good candidate if constructed correctly. T

This paper proposes two hybrid feature subset selection approaches based on the combination (union or intersection) of both supervised and unsupervised filter approaches before using a wrapper, aiming to obtain low-dimensional features with high accuracy and interpretability and low time consumption. Experiments with the proposed hybrid approaches have been conducted on seven high-dimensional feature datasets. The classifiers adopted are support vector machine (SVM), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and K-nearest neighbour (KNN). Experimental results have demonstrated the advantages and usefulness of the proposed methods in feature subset selection in high-dimensional space in terms of the number of selected features and time spe

This paper presents a comparative study between different oil production enhancement scenarios in the Saadi tight oil reservoir located in the Halfaya Iraqi oil field. The reservoir exhibits poor petrophysical characteristics, including medium pore size, low permeability (reaching zero in some areas), and high porosity of up to 25%. Previous stimulation techniques such as acid fracturing and matrix acidizing have yielded low oil production in this reservoir. Therefore, the feasibility of hydraulic fracturing stimulation and/or horizontal well drilling scenarios was assessed to increase the production rate. While horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing can improve well performance, they come with high costs, often accounting for up t