BACKGROUND: Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) is a proangiogenic factor that exerts different effects over stem cell survival growth, apoptosis, and adhesion. Its impact on leukemogenesis has been established by many studies. AIM: This study aimed to determine the effect of plasma HGF activity on acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients at presentation and after remission. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This was a cross-sectional prospective study of 30 newly-diagnosed, adult, and AML patients. All patients received the 7+3 treatment protocol. Patients’ clinical data were taken at presentation, and patients were followed up for 6 months to evaluate the clinical status. Plasma HGF levels were estimated by ELISA based methods in the patients at two intervals first at diagnosis and the 2nd time after remission of disease. Plasma HGF levels were only measured once in twenty healthy control individuals. RESULTS: A statistically significant lowering in the median levels of HGF after remission induction therapy has been found when compared with those before treatment (p = 0.006) and in the group of patients who achieved complete remission in comparison with those before treatment (p = 0.005). Furthermore, a significant reduction was also demonstrated after treatment in patients presenting with extramedullary involvement (p = 0.003) and in the alive group (p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: Plasma HGF estimation can be a useful parameter in predicting treatment outcomes in patients with AML, and it can add potentially useful information to risk stratification parameters.
Seepage through earth dams is one of the most popular causes for earth dam collapse due to internal granule movement and seepage transfer. In earthen dams, the core plays a vital function in decreasing seepage through the dam body and lowering the phreatic line. In this research, an alternative soil to the clay soil used in the dam core has been proposed by conducting multiple experiments to test the permeability of silty and sandy soil with different additives materials. Then the selected sandy soil model was used to represent the dam experimentally, employing a permeability device to measure the amount of water that seeps through the dam's body and to represent the seepage line. A numerical model was adopted using Geo-Studio software i
... Show MoreAs one type of resistance furnace, the electrical tube furnace (ETF) typically experiences input noise, measurement noise, system uncertainties, unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances, which significantly degrade its temperature control performance. To provide precise, and robust temperature tracking performance for the ETF, a robust composite control (RCC) method is proposed in this paper. The overall RCC method consists of four elements: First, the mathematical model of the ETF system is deduced, then a state feedback control (SFC) is constructed. Third, a novel disturbance observer (DO) is designed to estimate the lumped disturbance with one observer parameter. Moreover, the stability of the closed loop system including controller
... Show MoreThe study presents the test results of stabilizing gypseous soil embankment obtained from
Al- Faluja university Campus at Al-Ramady province. The laboratory investigation was divided
into three phases, The physical and chemical properties, the optimum liquid asphalt (emulsion)
requirements (which are manufactured in Iraq) were determined by using one dimensional
unconfined compression strength test.in the first phase , The optimum fluid content was 11%
(6% of emulsion with 5% water content).. At phase two, the effect of Aeration technique was
investigated using both direct shear and permeability test. At phase three for the case of static
load , the pure soil embankment model under dry test condition was investigated
This research is carried out to investigate the externally post-tensioning technique for strengthening RC beams. In this research, four T-section RC beams having the same dimensions and material properties were casted and tested up to failure by applying two mid-third concentrated loads. Three of these beams are strengthened by using external tendons, while the remaining beam is kept without strengthening as a control beam. Two external strands of 12 mm diameter were fixed at each side of the web of the strengthened beams and located at depth of 200 mm from top fiber of the section (dps). So that the depth of strands to overall depth of the section ratio (dps
... Show MoreMutans streptococci (MS) are a group of oral bacteria considered as the main cariogenic organisms. MS consists of several species of genus Streptococcus which are sharing similar phenotypes and genotypes. The aim of this study is to determine the genetic diversity of the core species of clinical strains of Streptococcus mutans, Streptococcus sobrinus and Streptococcus downei by using repitative extragenic palindromic (REP) primer. The DNA of the clinical strains of S. mutans (n=10), S. sobrinus (n=05) and S. downei (n=04) have been employed in the present study, which have been previously isolated from caries active subjects. The DNA of the clinical and reference strains was
... Show MoreThe ability of using aluminum filings which is locally solid waste was tested as a mono media in gravity rapid filter. The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of variation of influent water turbidity (10, 20and 30 NTU); flow rate(30, 40, and 60 l/hr) and bed height (30and60)cm on the performance of aluminum filings filter media for 5 hours run time and compare it with the conventional sand filter. The results indicated that aluminum filings filter showed better performance than sand filter in the removal of turbidity and in the reduction of head loss. Results showed that the statistical model developed by the multiple linear regression was proved to be
valid, and it could be used to predict head loss in aluminum filings
Box-Wilson experimental design method was employed to optimized lead ions removal efficiency by bulk liquid membrane (BLM) method. The optimization procedure was primarily based on four impartial relevant parameters: pH of feed phase (4-6), pH of stripping phase (9-11), carrier concentration TBP (5-10) %, and initial metal concentration (60-120 ppm). maximum recovery efficiency of lead ions is 83.852% was virtually done following thirty one-of-a-kind experimental runs, as exact through 24-Central Composite Design (CCD). The best values for the aforementioned four parameters, corresponding to the most restoration efficiency were: 5, 10, 7.5% (v/v), and 90 mg/l, respectively. The obtained experimental data had been
... Show MoreIn this work, the photocatalytic degradation of indigo carmine (IC) using zinc oxide suspension was studied. The effect of influential parameters such as initial indigo carmine concentration and catalyst loading were studied with the effect of Vis irradiation in the presence of reused ZnO was also investigated. The increased in initial dye concentration decreased the photodegradation and the increased catalyst loading increased the degradation percentage and the reused-ZnO exhibits lower photocatalytic activity than the ZnO catalyst. It has been found that the photocatalytic degradation of indigo carmine obeyed the pseudo-first-order kinetic reaction in presence of zinc oxide. This was found from plotting the relationship between ln
... Show MoreIn this paper, a Sokol-Howell prey-predator model involving strong Allee effect is proposed and analyzed. The existence, uniqueness, and boundedness are studied. All the five possible equilibria have been are obtained and their local stability conditions are established. Using Sotomayor's theorem, the conditions of local saddle-node and transcritical and pitchfork bifurcation are derived and drawn. Numerical simulations are performed to clarify the analytical results