Background: Toll-like receptors (TLRs) play a significant role in the activation of adaptive immunity and may have an essential role in the development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Objectives: To assess the gene expression of TLR4 in individuals with RA compared to healthy individuals. Methods: From July to December 2022. A total of 100 individuals were encompassed in the study, consisting of 50 individuals diagnosed with RA, of whom 42 were females and 8 were males, with an average age of 45.22 years. Additionally, there were 50 healthy control participants, 40 of whom were females and 10 were males, with an average age of 45.64 years. To assess the TLR4 transcript levels, blood samples were collected from each participant, and RNA extraction was performed. cDNA synthesis was carried out, and real-time PCR was utilized for the analysis. The researchers also assessed the clinicopathological characteristics of the patients. Results: The serum TLR4 gene was significantly overexpressed in RA patients (fold change 2.59) compared to the controls (fold change 1.07). The expression level of the TLR4 gene was correlated with the clinicopathological characteristics of the patients, including erythrocyte sedimentation rates (ESR), RF, anti-CCP antibody, and DAS28. Conclusion: TLR4 was overexpressed in RA patients and was correlated with disease activity. It might be a therapeutic target and may contribute to the pathogenesis of RA.
The automatic estimation of speaker characteristics, such as height, age, and gender, has various applications in forensics, surveillance, customer service, and many human-robot interaction applications. These applications are often required to produce a response promptly. This work proposes a novel approach to speaker profiling by combining filter bank initializations, such as continuous wavelets and gammatone filter banks, with one-dimensional (1D) convolutional neural networks (CNN) and residual blocks. The proposed end-to-end model goes from the raw waveform to an estimated height, age, and gender of the speaker by learning speaker representation directly from the audio signal without relying on handcrafted and pre-computed acou
... Show MoreAgricultural lands have great importance in people's lives, and their exploitation has a great impact on strengthening the national economy. Therefore, countries have given great importance to this sector, and because of the importance of this sector, the state has given large areas of these lands to the farmers to invest in agriculture, and among these farmers are those who died and left behind children who took up crafts. Agriculture, for fear that these agricultural lands would be abandoned and turned into waste lands, a land system was introduced called (regular distribu- tion), which corresponds to (legitimate inheritance). Under this system, these lands were trans- ferred to the children of farmers who died so that the process of inve
... Show MoreThe summary of this study is to identify the relation ship between exposuing of the
public to foreign satellites and the degree of cultural of Iraqi public . the danger Iraqi public
exposure to foreign satellite specially some groups of the public are still own limited culture
and ideology without enough conscious to attitude of society . such people cun easily be
controlled by satellites , because these satellites may be the only cultural source for them
which may badly affect their behaviour . This study also aims to identify the level of Iraqi
people exposure to foreign satellites and the types and motivations of that exposure , then to
realize the relationship between exposing to foreign satellites and the cultur
Ground-based active optical sensors (GBAOS) have been successfully used in agriculture to predict crop yield potential (YP) early in the season and to improvise N rates for optimal crop yield. However, the models were found weak or inconsistent due to environmental variation especially rainfall. The objectives of the study were to evaluate if GBAOS could predict YP across multiple locations, soil types, cultivation systems, and rainfall differences. This study was carried from 2011 to 2013 on corn (Zea mays L.) in North Dakota, and in 2017 in potatoes in Maine. Six N rates were used on 50 sites in North Dakota and 12 N rates on two sites, one dryland and one irrigated, in Maine. Two active GBAOS used for this study were GreenSeeker and Holl
... Show MoreThe importance of this research lies in developing a psychological expenditure scale and its relationship to the passing skills of specialized volleyball players. The research problem focused on psychological expenditure as one of the problems and challenges faced by specialized players and its negative impact, such as poor skill performance, which is reflected in the performance of the player and the team. This weakens the player's self-confidence and concentration and affects the team's performance in tournaments as well as their performance in training. The research aims to develop a psychological expenditure scale, and the researcher used the descriptive approach as it is appropriate for the nature of the research problem. The f
... Show MoreTrajectory tracking and vibration suppression are essential objectives in a flexible joint manipulator control. The flexible joint manipulator is an under-actuated system, in which the number of control actions is less than the degree of freedom to be controlled. It is very challenging to control the underactuated nonlinear system with two degree of freedom. This paper presents a hierarchical sliding mode control (HSMC) for a rotary flexible joint manipulator (RFJM). Firstly, the rotary flexible joint manipulator is modeled by two subsystems. Secondly, the sliding surfaces for both subsystems are constructed. Finally, the control action is designed based on the Lyapunov function. Computer simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of
... Show MorePhotovoltaic devices (PVs) were fabricated by spray-coating an ink of copper indium diselenide CuInSeR 2 R(CIS) nanocrystals as the light-absorbing layer. Without high-temperature post-deposition annealing, PVs were made on glass substrates with power conversion efficiencies of up to 1.5% and 0.9%, for Au and Mo coated respectively, under AM 1.5 illumination. UV–Vis spectrophotometer in the wavelength range 350–1500 nm. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis it is evident that CuInSeR 2 R have the chalcopyrite structure as the major phase and no secondary phase with a preferred orientation along (112) direction and The atomic ratio of Cu : In : Se in the nanocrystals is nearly 1 : 1 : 2.