Abstract Aim: Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder which affects communication and social interaction of children. It is a heterogeneous disease with various clinical presentations. Some genes are involved in its pathogenesis. It has been suggested that environmental exposure to lead can increase the risk of autism. The aim of our study was to compare blood lead levels among autistic and non-autistic children. Material and Method: This retrospective study included 107 children (60 with autism and 47 without autism) referred from the different Iraqi provinces, in the years 2015, 2016 and 2017, to the poisoning consultation center in Baghdad. Data collection including age, gender, residence, referral source, family history and blood lead l

Aim This study is an overview of NPEV investigated during AFP surveillance programs for the period 2010–2017 in Iraq. Methods Stool samples from 4296 AFP cases and 2933 healthy contacts among children less than 15 years of age were processed for virus isolation as a part of AFP surveillance for the Global Polio Eradication Program in Iraq at National Polio Laboratory. NPEV detection was performed by virus isolation on cell culture according to WHO recommendations. Results The NPEV isolation rate was 14% of total AFP cases and 14.5% of healthy contacts. The infection rate was higher in males than females with a male/female ratio of 1.5: 1. The highest NPEV infection rate was observed among the children aged 1-2 years and decrease significa

The aim of the current study is to in evaluate the role of SOD activity in the previously reported oxidative stress in our laboratory(1), in the patients with different brain tumors. SOD activity was assayed according to riboflavin/NBT method and its specific activity was calculated in patients with benign and malignant brain tumors and control. Moreover the specific activity was compared in these samples according to gender and the occurrence of disease.Non significant elevation (P > 0.05) in SOD specific activity was observed in tissue of malignant tumors in comparison to that of in benign brain tumors. While a highly significant decrease (P < 0.001) of the specific activity was found in sera of malignant patients group in comparison to t

The high temperature superconductor’s compounds are one of the hot spot field of science, due to their applications in industries. Hg0.8Sb0.2Ba2Ca2Cu3O8+δ and Hg0.8Sb0.2Ba2Ca1Cu2O6+δ, were manufactured using a doable-step of solid state reaction method. The samples were sintered at 800 ° C. The transition temperatures Tc are found from electrically resistively by using four probe techniques. The resistivity become zero when the transition temperature Tc(offset) have 131 and 119 K, and the onset temperature Tc(onset) have 139 K for Hg0.8Sb0.2Ba2Ca2Cu3O8+δ and 132 K for Hg0.8Sb0.2Ba2Ca1Cu2O6+δ. Analysis of X-ray diffraction showed a tetragonal structure with lattice parameters changes for all samples.

A numerical investigation of mixed convection in a horizontal annulus filled with auniform fluid-saturated porous medium in the presence of internal heat generation is carried out.The inner cylinder is heated while the outer cylinder is cooled. The forced flow is induced by thecold outer cylinder rotating at a constant angular velocity. The flow field is modeled using ageneralized form of the momentum equation that accounts for the presence of porous mediumviscous, Darcian and inertial effects. Discretization of the governing equations is achieved usinga finite difference method. Comparisons with previous works are performed and the results showgood agreement. The effects of pertinent parameters such as the Richardson number and internalRay

A chemical optical fiber sensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) was developed and implemented using multimode plastic optical fiber. The sensor is used to detect and measure the refractive index and concentration of various chemical materials (Urea, Ammonia, Formaldehyde and Sulfuric acid) as well as to evaluate the performance parameters such as sensitivity, signal to noise ratio, resolution and figure of merit. It  was noticed that the value of the sensitivity of the optical fiber-based SPR sensor, with 60nm and 10 mm long, Aluminum(Al) and Gold (Au) metals film exposed sensing region, was 4.4 μm, while the SNR was 0.20, figure of merit was 20 and resolution 0.00045. In this work a multimode