It was aimed to understand the interleukin-4 (IL-4) role in etio-pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Two approaches were adopted. In the first one, a quantitative expression of IL4 gene was assessed by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), and such findings were correlated with some demographic, clinical and laboratory parameters, which included gender, duration of disease, disease activity score (DAS-28), rheumatoid factors (RFs), C-reactive protein (CRP) and anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (ACCP) antibodies. In the second approach, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of IL4 gene (rs2243250) was inspected by DNA sequencing using specific primers. Fifty-one Iraqi RA patients (22 males and 29 females) were enrolled in the study. They were under therapy, which was a single weekly subcutaneous dose of 25 mg of etanercept (Enbrel) for a period of 3-5 years. The results of gene expression (2-??Ct) revealed an increased expression of IL4 mRNA (Mean ± SEM: 8.247 ± 2.442), especially female patients compared to male patients (11.545 ± 3.928 vs. 3.537 ± 1.530; p = 0.03). The expression was also subjected to variations that were related to clinical and laboratory findings. With respect to IL4 gene SNP, allele and genotype frequencies showed no significant differences between RA patients and controls. In addition, the SNP genotypes had no effect on IL4 gene expression. In conclusion, an up-regulation of IL4 gene expression was observed in RA patients, and it was more pronounced in female than male patients by approximately four folds, while no association between the IL4 SNP alleles or genotypes and RA was observed.
Photonic crystal fiber interferometers are used in many sensing applications. In this work, an in-reflection photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based on Mach-Zehnder (micro-holes collapsing) (MZ) interferometer, which exhibits high sensitivity to different volatile organic compounds (VOCs), without the needing of any permeable material. The interferometer is robust, compact, and consists of a stub photonic crystal fiber of large-mode area, photonic crystal fiber spliced to standard single mode fiber (SMF) (corning-28), this splicing occurs with optimized splice loss 0.19 dB In the splice regions the voids of the holey fiber are completely collapsed, which allows the excitation and recombination of core and cladding modes. The device reflection
... Show MoreCorpus linguistics is a methodology in studying language through corpus-based research. It differs from a traditional approach in studying a language (prescriptive approach) in its insistence on the systematic study of authentic examples of language in use (descriptive approach).A “corpus” is a large body of machine-readable structurally collected naturally occurring linguistic data, either written texts or a transcription of recorded speech, which can be used as a starting-point of linguistic description or as a means of verifying hypotheses about a language. In the past decade, interest has grown tremendously in the use of language corpora for language education. The ways in which corpora have been employed in language pedago
... Show MoreHuman Interactive Proofs (HIPs) are automatic inverse Turing tests, which are intended to differentiate between people and malicious computer programs. The mission of making good HIP system is a challenging issue, since the resultant HIP must be secure against attacks and in the same time it must be practical for humans. Text-based HIPs is one of the most popular HIPs types. It exploits the capability of humans to recite text images more than Optical Character Recognition (OCR), but the current text-based HIPs are not well-matched with rapid development of computer vision techniques, since they are either vey simply passed or very hard to resolve, thus this motivate that
... Show MoreRecently, all over the world mechanism of cloud computing is widely acceptable and used by most of the enterprise businesses in order increase their productivity. However there are still some concerns about the security provided by the cloud environment are raises. Thus in this our research project, we are discussing over the cloud computing paradigm evolvement for the large business applications like CRM as well as introducing the new framework for the secure cloud computing using the method of IT auditing. In this case our approach is basically directed towards the establishment of the cloud computing framework for the CRM applications with the use of checklists by following the data flow of the CRM application and its lifecycle. Those ch
... Show MoreIn modern technology, the ownership of electronic data is the key to securing their privacy and identity from any trace or interference. Therefore, a new identity management system called Digital Identity Management, implemented throughout recent years, acts as a holder of the identity data to maintain the holder’s privacy and prevent identity theft. Therefore, an overwhelming number of users have two major problems, users who own data and third-party applications will handle it, and users who have no ownership of their data. Maintaining these identities will be a challenge these days. This paper proposes a system that solves the problem using blockchain technology for Digital Identity Management systems. Blockchain is a powerful techniqu
... Show MoreBackground: Nursing interventions tailored to the smoking triggers in patients with non-communicable chronic diseases are essential. However, these interventions are scant due to the nature of factors associated with smoking cessation and the poor understanding of the effect of nurse-led intervention in Iraq.Purpose: This study aimed to determine the dominant smoking triggers and examine the effects of a tailored nursing intervention on smoking behavior in patients with non-communicable chronic diseases.Methods: Convenience samples of 128 patients with non-communicable chronic diseases, male and female patients, who were 18-70 years old, were recruited in this quasi-experimental, randomized comparative trial in the outpatient clinic
... Show MoreAbstract
The research aims to build a training program to develop some executive functions for kindergarten children. To achieve this goal, the two researchers built the program according to the following steps:
1. Determining the general objective of the program.
2. Determining the behavioral objectives of the program.
3. Determining the included content in the program.
4. Implementing the content of the activities of the program.
5. Evaluating the Program.
The program included (12) training activities, the training activities included several items: the title of the activity, the time of implementation of the activity, the general objective of the activity, the procedural behavioral objective, the means and tools u
This article investigates how an appropriate chaotic map (Logistic, Tent, Henon, Sine...) should be selected taking into consideration its advantages and disadvantages in regard to a picture encipherment. Does the selection of an appropriate map depend on the image properties? The proposed system shows relevant properties of the image influence in the evaluation process of the selected chaotic map. The first chapter discusses the main principles of chaos theory, its applicability to image encryption including various sorts of chaotic maps and their math. Also this research explores the factors that determine security and efficiency of such a map. Hence the approach presents practical standpoint to the extent that certain chaos maps will bec
... Show MoreKE Sharquie, SA Al-Mashhadani, AA Noaimi, AA Hasan, Journal of Cutaneous and Aesthetic Surgery, 2012 - Cited by 19