Land snails constitute an important group of mollusks distributed worldwide. This study reports on land snails found in Iraq. A survey of terrestrial gastropods was performed during their activity seasons in gardens, agricultural lands and nurseries in Iraq from March 2022 to September 2023. Fifteen terrestrial snails belonging to seven families were documented. The species Euchondrus michonii (Bourguignat, 1853) was identified and recorded based on several distinct conchological characters for the first time in Iraq. The recently collected specimens, along with those previously recorded in Iraq, were included in this checklist. Essential information on each species is also presented. As there is no previous checklist or study that

Identity is an influential and flexible concept in social sciences and political studies. The basic sense of identity is looking for uniqueness. In one sense, it is a sign of identification with those we assume they are similar to us or at least in some significant ways they are so. Globalization, migration, modern technologies, media and political conflicts are argued to have a crucial effect on identity representation in terms of the political perspectives specifically in the United States of America. This paper endeavors to investigate how American politicians represent their identities in speeches delivered in different periods of time namely from 2015 to 2018 in terms of the pragmatic paradigm. Three randomly selected speeches by fa

The rate of gas induction was measured in gas-inducing type mechanically agitated contactors provided with two impellers. A reactor of 0.5 m i.d. was used with a working capacity of 60 liters of liquid. Tap water was used as the liquid phase, and air was used as the gas phase. The bioreactor mixing system consists of two equal diameter stirrers; the top impeller is shrouded-disk/curved-blade turbine with six evacuated bending blades, while the bottom impeller was disk turbine. The impeller speed was varied in the range of 50 to 800 rpm. The ratio of impeller diameter to tank diameter (D/T) and the submergence (S) of upper impeller from the top were varied. The effects of clearance of lower impeller from the tank bottom (C₂) an

Let A ⊆ V(H) of any graph H, every node w of H be labeled using a set of numbers; , where d(w,v) denotes the distance between node w and the node v in H, known as its open A-distance pattern. A graph H is known as the open distance-pattern uniform (odpu)-graph, if there is a nonempty subset A ⊆V(H) together with  is the same for all . Here  is known as the open distance pattern uniform (odpu-) labeling of the graph H and A is known as an odpu-set of H. The minimum cardinality of vertices in any odpu-set of H, if it exists, will be known as the odpu-number of the graph H. This article gives a characterization of maximal outerplanar-odpu graphs. Also, it establishes that the possible odpu-number of an odpu-maximal outerplanar graph i

The problem of frequency estimation of a single sinusoid observed in colored noise is addressed. Our estimator is based on the operation of the sinusoidal digital phase-locked loop (SDPLL) which carries the frequency information in its phase error after the noisy sinusoid has been acquired by the SDPLL. We show by computer simulations that this frequency estimator beats the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) on the frequency error variance for moderate and high SNRs when the colored noise has a general low-pass filtered (LPF) characteristic, thereby outperforming, in terms of frequency error variance, several existing techniques some of which are, in addition, computationally demanding. Moreover, the present approach generalizes on existing work tha

Epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a process comprising cellular and molecular events which result in cells shifting from an epithelial to a mesenchymal phenotype. Periodontitis is a destructive chronic disease of the periodontium initiated in response to a dysbiotic microbiome, and dominated by Gram-negative bacteria in the subgingival niches accompanied by an aberrant immune response in susceptible subjects. Both EMT and periodontitis share common risk factors and drivers, including Gram-negative bacteria, excess inflammatory cytokine production, smoking, oxidative stress and diabetes mellitus. In addition, periodontitis is characterized by down-regulation of key epithelial markers such as E-cadherin together with up-regulation of