Introduction: Breast cancer is the most common cancer and the major cause of cancer related deaths among Iraqi women. Due to the relatively late detection of breast cancer, the majority of the patients are still treated by modified radicle mastectomy. Aim: To assess the time lag between diagnosis of breast cancer and mastectomy among Iraqi patients; correlating the findings with other clinicopathological characteristics of the disease. Patients and methods: This retrospective study enrolled 226 Iraqi female patients who were diagnosed with breast cancer. Data were registered on the exact time period between signing the histopathological report and the surgical treatment. Other recorded variables included the age of the patients, their level

Introduction: Cutaneous leishmaniasis is considered a parasitic contagion resulting from the flagellated parasite belonging to the genus of Leishmania. Also, cutaneous leishmaniasis is a zoonotic ailment transmitted through the bloodsucking sand-flies bite (belonging to the Phlebotomus genus). The disease's reservoirs included wild or semi-domesticated animals, in general rodents and dogs. Tissue inhibitor metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1) is one of the extracellular matrix proteins that have a role in vessel wall degeneration and aneurysm development. In addition, it belongs to the zinc-dependent endopeptidases family that are involved in the degradation of connective tissues proteins which are included in vascular integrity maintenance. The Ge

Background: Periodontitis is an inflammatory disease that affects the supporting tissues of the teeth; Smoking is an important risk factor for periodontitis induces alveolar bone loss and cause an imbalance between bone resorption and bone deposition. The purpose of this study is to detect and compare the presence of incipient periodontitis among young smokers and non-smokers by measuring the distance between cement-enamel junction and alveolar crest (CEJ-Ac) using Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT). Material and methods: The total sample composed of fifty two participants, thirty one smokers and twenty one non-smokers (age range 14-22 years). Periodontal parameters: plaque index (PLI), gingival index (GI) were recorded for all teeth exc

One of the recent significant but challenging research studies in computational biology and bioinformatics is to unveil protein complexes from protein-protein interaction networks (PPINs). However, the development of a reliable algorithm to detect more complexes with high quality is still ongoing in many studies. The main contribution of this paper is to improve the effectiveness of the well-known modularity density ( ) model when used as a single objective optimization function in the framework of the canonical evolutionary algorithm (EA). To this end, the design of the EA is modified with a gene ontology-based mutation operator, where the aim is to make a positive collaboration between the modularity density model and the proposed

Background: Plasma-activated water (PAW) is considered one of the emerging strategies that has been highlighted recently in the food industry for microbial decontamination and mycotoxin detoxification, due to its unique provisional characteristics. Aim: The effectiveness of PAW for aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), ochratoxin A (OTA), and fumonisin B1 (FB1) detoxification in naturally contaminated poultry feeds with its impacts on the feed quality were inspected. Methods: PAW-30 and PAW-60 were utilized for feed treatment for six time durations (5, 10, 15, 20, 40 and 60 min) each. The alterations in the physicochemical properties of PAW after different time durations of plasma inducement and treatment with and without feed samples were monit

The present work aimed to study the efficiency of nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) process for water recovery from electroplating wastewater and study the factors affecting the performance of two membrane processes. Nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membranes are made from polyamide as spiral wound module. The inorganic materials ZnCl2, CuCl2.2H2O, NiCl2.6H2O and CrCl3.6H2O were used as feed solutions. The operating parameters studied were: operating time, feed concentrations for heavy metal ions, operating pressure, feed flow rate, feed temperature and feed pH. The experimental results showed, the permeate concentration increased and water flux decreased with increase in time from 0 to 70 min. The permeate concentrations incre

Background: The marginal seal is essential for sealant success because penetration of bacteria under the sealant might allow caries onset or progression. The aim of the present study was to estimate and compare the microleakage of pit and fissure sealant after various methods of occlusal surface preparation. Materials and methods: Thirty non-carious premolars extracted for orthodontic reasons were equally divided into three groups. In group one, occlusal fissures were opened with round carbide bur, in group two, occlusal surfaces of the teeth were cleaned with a dry pointed bristle brush and samples of group three were cleaned with a slurry of fine flour of pumice in water using rubber cup. Then fissures of all teeth were etched using 35% p

This paper is concerned with pre-test single and double stage shrunken estimators for the mean (?) of normal distribution when a prior estimate (?0) of the actule value (?) is available, using specifying shrinkage weight factors ?(?) as well as pre-test region (R). Expressions for the Bias [B(?)], mean squared error [MSE(?)], Efficiency [EFF(?)] and Expected sample size [E(n/?)] of proposed estimators are derived. Numerical results and conclusions are drawn about selection different constants included in these expressions. Comparisons between suggested estimators, with respect to classical estimators in the sense of Bias and Relative Efficiency, are given. Furthermore, comparisons with the earlier existing works are drawn.