This study aimed to evaluate the health effects of exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) and gaseous pollutants, including carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and sulfur dioxide (SO2), on the hematological parameters of workers exposed to charcoal grilling emissions in restaurants. Air pollutant concentrations were measured in six barbecue restaurants located in Al-Rusafa District, Baghdad, during December 2024 and January 2025. Nine measurements were recorded monthly during morning and evening peak cooking periods. Blood samples were collected from two groups: grilling workers exposed directly to charcoal smoke (n = 30) and customers from dining areas as the control group (n = 30). Hematological analyses included white blood cells (WBC), red blood cells (RBC), hemoglobin (HGB), hematocrit (HCT), platelets (PLT), and other blood indices. Statistical analyses were performed using independent t-tests and stepwise multiple linear regression analysis. The results showed that pollutant concentrations were consistently higher in grilling areas than in dining areas, especially during evening hours, due to intensive cooking activity and insufficient ventilation. PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations frequently exceeded World Health Organization (WHO) permissible limits in grilling areas, while CO, NO2, and SO2 also reached elevated levels. Significant increases (p ≤ 0.05) were observed in WBC, RBC, HGB, HCT, mean corpuscular volume (MCV), and PLT among exposed workers compared with the control group. Stepwise regression analysis demonstrated that CO2 was positively associated with WBC, HGB, RBC, MCV, and PLT, whereas PM10 and PM2.5 showed negative associations with several hematological parameters after adjustment for co-pollutants. These findings suggest that chronic exposure to indoor air pollutants generated from charcoal grilling may induce systemic inflammation, oxidative stress, and physiological adaptation to hypoxic conditions among restaurant workers.
The university course timetable problem (UCTP) is typically a combinatorial optimization problem. Manually achieving a useful timetable requires many days of effort, and the results are still unsatisfactory. unsatisfactory. Various states of art methods (heuristic, meta-heuristic) are used to satisfactorily solve UCTP. However, these approaches typically represent the instance-specific solutions. The hyper-heuristic framework adequately addresses this complex problem. This research proposed Particle Swarm Optimizer-based Hyper Heuristic (HH PSO) to solve UCTP efficiently. PSO is used as a higher-level method that selects low-level heuristics (LLH) sequence which further generates an optimal solution. The proposed a
... Show MoreObjective: To study the effect of epidural spinal injection over one year in case of spinal stenosis. Methodology: This prospective study included 566 patients with spinal stenosis seen at Al-Kindy Teaching and Al-Sader, Hospitals who were treated by local epidural steroid injection. They were followed up for at least five subsequent visits after seven days, one month, three months, six months, and one year to assess efficacy. Result: Mean age of patients was 49.5 years, with a predominance of females (65%). L4/L5 was the most involved level in the spinal stenosis (70%). Grade II stenosis accounted for (45.4%) of cases. The pairwise comparison revealed that there was significant decrease in proportions of patients with pain in day
... Show MoreTillage tools are subject to friction and low-stress abrasive wear processes with the potential deterioration of the desired soil quality, loss of mechanical weed efficacy, and downtime for replacing worn tools. Limited experimental methods exist to quantify investigate the effect of wear-resistant coatings on shape parameters of soil-engaging tools. ASTM standard sand/rubber wheel abrasion and pin-on-disk tests are not able to simulate wear characteristics of the complex shape of the tillage tools. Even though the tribology of tillage tools can be realistic from field tests, tillage wear tests under field conditions are expensive and often challenging to generate repeatable engineeri
Portland Cement is manufactured by adding 3% gypsum to clinker which is produced by grinding, pulverizing, mixing, and then burning a raw mix of silica, and calcium carbonate. Limestone is the main source of carbonates, while clay collected from arable land is the main source of silica. The marl in the Euphrates Formation was studied as an alternative to arable lands. Nine boreholes drilled and penetrated the marl layer in selected locations at the Kufa cement quarry. Forty-one samples of marl from boreholes and four samples of limestone from the closed area were collected. The chemical content of the major oxides and the hardness of the marl layer was very encouraging as a raw material for Portland Cement as they are SiO2 (17.60),
... Show MoreThe present work aims to improve the flux of forward osmosis with the use of Thin Film Composite membrane by reducing the effect of polarization on draw solution (brine solution) side.This study was conducted in two parts. The first is under the effect of polarization in which the flux and the water permeability coefficient (A) were calculated. In the second part of the study the experiments were repeated using a circulating pump at various speeds to make turbulence and reduce the effect of polarization on the brine solution side.
A model capable of predicting water permeability coefficient has been derived, and this is given by the following equations:
Z=Z0 +C.R.T/9.8(d2/D2+1) [Exp. [-9.8(d
Tin Selenide (SnSe) Nano crystalline thin films of thickness 400±20 nm were deposited on glass substrate by thermal evaporation technique at R.T under a vacuum of ∼ 2 × 10− 5 mbar to study the effect of annealing temperatures (as-deposited, 100, 150 and 200) °C on its structural, surface morphology and optical properties. The films structure was characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) which showed that all the films have polycrystalline in nature and orthorhombic structure, with the preferred orientation along the (111) plane. These films was synthesized of very fine crystallites size of (14.8-24.5) nm, the effect of annealing temperatures on the cell parameters, crystallite size and dislocation density were observed.
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