Human beta-defenses (hBDs) are antimicrobial peptides involved in innate immune protection, and their association with the risk of respiratory allergy has been proposed. Therefore, this study sought to evaluate this association in allergic rhinitis (AR) and asthma (AS) of Iraqi patients. A case-control study was conducted to investigate serum levels of hBD1, hBD2, hBD3, and hBD4 in 52 AR and 60 AS patients and 61 healthy controls (HC). The hBDs were determined using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits. Results revealed that median levels of hBD1, hBD2, and hBD3 were significantly elevated in the serum of AR and AS patients compared with HC (p < 0.01). Levels of hBD4 were also elevated in AR and AS patients but the differences were not significant. The levels of hBDs showed no significant differences between AR and AS patients. Age, gender, symptoms, and disease duration of patients influenced some of these variations. Logistic regression analysis indicated that hBD3 was the most important marker associated with the risk of AR and AS, and the estimated Odds ratios were 25.31 (95% confidence interval: 2.97-215.78; p = 0.012) and 32.20 (95% confidence interval: 2.49-415.89; pc = 0.032), respectively. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis revealed that hBD3 occupied a very good area under the curve in AR and AS (0.83 and 0.84, respectively). In conclusion, the role of hBDs in the pathogenesis of AR and AS was indicated. In this context, hBD3 was the most important, and its association with the risk of developing AR and AS was suggested.
Speech recognition is a very important field that can be used in many applications such as controlling to protect area, banking, transaction over telephone network database access service, voice email, investigations, House controlling and management ... etc. Speech recognition systems can be used in two modes: to identify a particular person or to verify a person’s claimed identity. The family speaker recognition is a modern field in the speaker recognition. Many family speakers have similarity in the characteristics and hard to identify between them. Today, the scope of speech recognition is limited to speech collected from cooperative users in real world office environments and without adverse microphone or channel impairments.
Recently there has been an urgent need to identify the ages from their personal pictures and to be used in the field of security of personal and biometric, interaction between human and computer, security of information, law enforcement. However, in spite of advances in age estimation, it stills a difficult problem. This is because the face old age process is determined not only by radical factors, e.g. genetic factors, but also by external factors, e.g. lifestyle, expression, and environment. This paper utilized machine learning technique to intelligent age estimation from facial images using support vector machine (SVM) on FG_NET dataset. The proposed work consists of three phases: the first phase is image preprocessing include four st
... Show MoreIn this paper, a new hybridization of supervised principal component analysis (SPCA) and stochastic gradient descent techniques is proposed, and called as SGD-SPCA, for real large datasets that have a small number of samples in high dimensional space. SGD-SPCA is proposed to become an important tool that can be used to diagnose and treat cancer accurately. When we have large datasets that require many parameters, SGD-SPCA is an excellent method, and it can easily update the parameters when a new observation shows up. Two cancer datasets are used, the first is for Leukemia and the second is for small round blue cell tumors. Also, simulation datasets are used to compare principal component analysis (PCA), SPCA, and SGD-SPCA. The results sh
... Show MoreTerrestrial laser scanners (TLSs) are 3D imaging systems that provide the most powerful 3D representation and practical solutions for various applications. Hence this is due to effective range measurements, 3D point cloud reliability, and rapid acquisition performance. Stonex X300 TOF scanner delivered better certainty in far-range than in close-range measurements due to the high noise level inherent within the data delivered from Time of Flight (TOF) scanning sensors. However, if these errors are manipulated properly using a valid calibration model, more accurate products can be obtained even from very close-range measurements. Therefore, to fill this gap, this research presents a user-oriented target-based calibration routine to
... Show MoreThe use of Cosine transform to analyze the model-noise pattern alteration with different vibration model applied on multimode fiber optics are studied. It's results compared with the Fourier transform to perform the same analysis using total frequency difference and the computation time, which almost coincide for the both transforms. A discussion for the results and recommendation are introduced.
The rise in the general level of prices in Iraq makes the local commodity less able to compete with other commodities, which leads to an increase in the amount of imports and a decrease in the amount of exports, since it raises demand for foreign currencies while decreasing demand for the local currency, which leads to a decrease in the exchange rate of the local currency in exchange for an increase in the exchange rate of currencies. This is one of the most important factors affecting the determination of the exchange rate and its fluctuations. This research deals with the currency of the European Euro and its impact against the Iraqi dinar. To make an accurate prediction for any process, modern methods can be used through which
... Show MoreAddition of bioactive materials such as Titanium oxide (TiO2), and incorporation of bio inert ceramic such as alumina (Al2O3), into polyetheretherketone (PEEK) has been adopted as an effective approach to improve bone-implant interfaces. In this paper, hot pressing technique has been adopted as a production method. This technique gave a homogenous distribution of the additive materials in the proposed composite biomaterial. Different compositions and compounding temperatures have been applied to all samples. Mechanical properties and animal model have been studied in all different production conditions. The results of these new TiO2/Al2O3/PEEK biocomposites with different
... Show MoreBackground: DVT is a very common problem with a very serious complications like pulmonary embolism (PE) which carries a high mortality,and many other chronic and annoying complications ( like chronic DVT, post-phlebitic syndrome, and chronic venous insufficiency) ,and it has many risk factors that affect its course, severity ,and response to treatment. Objectives: Most of those risk factors are modifiable, and a better understanding of the relationships between them can be beneficial for better assessment for liable pfatients , prevention of disease, and the effectiveness of our treatment modalities. Male to female ratio was nearly equal , so we didn’t discuss the gender among other risk factors. Type of the study:A cross- secti
This study presents an adaptive control scheme based on synergetic control theory for suppressing the vibration of building structures due to earthquake. The control key for the proposed controller is based on a magneto-rheological (MR) damper, which supports the building. According to Lyapunov-based stability analysis, an adaptive synergetic control (ASC) strategy was established under variation of the stiffness and viscosity coefficients in the vibrated building. The control and adaptive laws of the ASC were developed to ensure the stability of the controlled structure. The proposed controller addresses the suppression problem of a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) building model, and an earthquake control scenario was conducted and simulat
... Show MoreIn this paper, the reliability of the stress-strength model is derived for probability P(Y<X) of a component having its strength X exposed to one independent stress Y, when X and Y are following Gompertz Fréchet distribution with unknown shape parameters and known parameters . Different methods were used to estimate reliability R and Gompertz Fréchet distribution parameters, which are maximum likelihood, least square, weighted least square, regression, and ranked set sampling. Also, a comparison of these estimators was made by a simulation study based on mean square error (MSE) criteria. The comparison confirms that the performance of the maximum likelihood estimator is better than that of the other estimators.