Background: Acne is a common disorder experienced by adolescents and persists into adulthood in approximately 12%–14% of cases with psychological and social implications of high gravity. Fractional resurfacing employs a unique mechanism of action that repairs a fraction of skin at a time. The untreated healthy skin remains intact and actually aids the repair process, promoting rapid healing with only a day or two of downtime. Aims: This study, was designed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of fractional photothermolysis (fractionated Er: YAG laser 2940nm) in treating atrophic acne scars. Methods: 7 females and 3 males with moderate to severe atrophic acne scarring were enrolled in this study that attained private clinic for Dermatology and Laser in Baqubah city of Diyala - Iraq during the period from 1st of June 2019 to 10th of October 2019. Fractional Er:YAG laser 2940 nm wavelength was delivered to the whole face with a single pass treatment and for the acne scar areas with two passes. Therapeutic outcomes were assessed by standardized digital photography. Results: Three patients (30%) reported excellent improvement, five patients (50%) significant improvement, one patient (10%) moderate improvement, and one patient (10%) mild improvement in the appearance of the acne scars. Conclusion: Fractional Er: YAG a safe and effective option for the treatment of acne scars in Iraqi patients by offering faster recovery time with no or mild side effects in comparison to other traditional modalities.
في السنوات الأخيرة، أدى التقدم التكنولوجي في إنترنت الأشياء (IoT) وأجهزة الاستشعار الذكية إلى فتح اتجاهات جديدة وإعطاء حلول عملية في مختلف قطاعات الحياة. يتم التعرف على إنترنت الأشياء كتنولوجيا حديثة تربط بين مختلف انواع الشبكات. تم تحسين أنواع مختلفة من قطاعات الرعاية الصحية في المجال الطبي بناءً على هذه التكنولوجيا. أحد هذه القطاعات الهامة هو نظام مراقبة الصحة (HMS). تعتبر مراقبة المريض عن بعد لاسلكيًا وبت
... Show MoreThis study investigates the performance of granular dead anaerobic sludge (GDAS) bio-sorbent as permeable reactive barrier in removing phenol from a simulated contaminated shallow groundwater. Batch tests have been performed to characterize the equilibrium sorption properties of the GDAS and sandy soil in phenol-containing aqueous solutions. The results of GDAS tests proved that the best values of operating parameters, which achieve the maximum removal efficiency of phenol (=85%), at equilibrium contact time (=3 hr), initial pH of the solution (=5), initial phenol concentration (=50 mg/l), GDAS dosage (=0.5 g/100 ml), and agitation speed (=250 rpm). Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis proved that the carboxylic acid, aromatic, alk
... Show MoreImage segmentation using bi-level thresholds works well for straightforward scenarios; however, dealing with complex images that contain multiple objects or colors presents considerable computational difficulties. Multi-level thresholding is crucial for these situations, but it also introduces a challenging optimization problem. This paper presents an improved Reptile Search Algorithm (RSA) that includes a Gbest operator to enhance its performance. The proposed method determines optimal threshold values for both grayscale and color images, utilizing entropy-based objective functions derived from the Otsu and Kapur techniques. Experiments were carried out on 16 benchmark images, which inclu
Corrosion experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of several operating parameters on the corrosion rate and corrosion potential of carbon steel in turbulent flow conditions in the absence and presence of sodium benzoate inhibitor using electrochemical polarization technique. These parameters were rotational velocity (0 - 1.57 m/s), temperature (30oC – 50oC), and time. The effect of these parameters on the corrosion rate and inhibition efficiency were investigated and discussed. It was found that the corrosion rate represented by limiting current increases considerably with increasing velocity and temperature and that it decreased with time due to the formation of corrosion product layer. The corrosion potential shifted t
... Show MoreThe friendly-environment geophysical methods are commonly used in various engineering and near-surface environmental investigations. Electrical Resistivity Imaging technique was used to investigate the subsurface rocks, sediments properties of a proposed industrial site to characterize the lateral and vertical lithological changes. via the electrical resistivity, to give an overview about the karst, weak and robust subsoil zones. Nineteen 2D ERI profiles using Wenner array with 2 m electrode spacing have been applied to investigate the specific industry area. One of these profiles has been conducted with one-meter electrode spacing. The surveyed profiles are divided into a number of blocks, each block consists of several parallel pr
... Show MoreFeature selection (FS) constitutes a series of processes used to decide which relevant features/attributes to include and which irrelevant features to exclude for predictive modeling. It is a crucial task that aids machine learning classifiers in reducing error rates, computation time, overfitting, and improving classification accuracy. It has demonstrated its efficacy in myriads of domains, ranging from its use for text classification (TC), text mining, and image recognition. While there are many traditional FS methods, recent research efforts have been devoted to applying metaheuristic algorithms as FS techniques for the TC task. However, there are few literature reviews concerning TC. Therefore, a comprehensive overview was systematicall
... Show MoreObjective: The study aimed to 1) measure the prevalence of depression and anxiety among Iraqi pharmacy and medical students at a number of universities in Baghdad using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and 2) investigate the association between various sociodemographic factors and students’ HADS scores. Methods: This study was based on a cross-sectional descriptive design in four universities in Baghdad, Iraq. Depression and anxiety were screened using an Arabic version of the HADS. An online survey was administered via Qualtrics to convenience samples of students at four colleges of pharmacy and a college of medicine between March and June 2018. Multiple linear regression was used to identify factors associated
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