Background: Thyroid surgery has undergone many changes during the past 2 decades, including the introduction of new surgical techniques such as endoscopic or video-assisted approaches, anesthesia care, intraoperative nerve monitoring and new hemostatic tools
Objectives: to assess the efficacy and safety of Harmonic Focus shears in total thyroidectomy compared with conventional surgical technique.
Patients and methods: prospective study conducted from October 2011 till January 2016, two handers and nine patients with benign and malignant thyroid diseases, scheduled for total thyroidectomy in a governor and private hospitals were enrolled randomly into 2 groups, group A consists of 105 patient who undergone a total thyroidectomy usin

The synthesis of [1,2-diaminoethane-N,N'-bis(2-butylidine-3- onedioxime)] [II2L] and its cobalt(II), nickel(II), copper(II), palladium(II), platinum(II, IV), zinc(II), cadmium(II) and mercury(II) complexes is reported. The compounds were characterised by elemental analyses, spectroscopic methods [I.R, UV-Vis, ('H NMR. and EI mass for H2L)], molar conductivities, magnetic moments. I.R. spectra show that (H2L) behaves as a neutral or mononegative ligand depending on the nature of the metal ions. The molar conductance of the complexes in (DMSO) is commensurate with their ionic character. On the basis of the above measurements, a square planar geometry is proposed for NOD, Pd(II), and Pt(II) complexes, and an octahedr-al structure with trans

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

In this research Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique was applied to study the filtration process in water treatment. Eight models have been developed and tested using data from a pilot filtration plant, working under different process design criteria; influent turbidity, bed depth, grain size, filtration rate and running time (length of the filtration run), recording effluent turbidity and head losses. The ANN models were constructed for the prediction of different performance criteria in the filtration process: effluent turbidity, head losses and running time. The results indicate that it is quite possible to use artificial neural networks in predicting effluent turbidity, head losses and running time in the filtration process, wi

In 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

     In this paper, the bi-criteria machine scheduling problems (BMSP) are solved, where the discussed problem is represented by the sum of completion and the sum of late work times  simultaneously. In order to solve the suggested BMSP, some metaheurisitc methods are suggested which produce good results. The suggested local search methods are simulated annulling and bees algorithm. The results of the new metaheurisitc methods are compared with the complete enumeration method, which is considered an exact method, then compared results of the heuristics with each other to obtain the most efficient method.

Methods of speech recognition have been the subject of several studies over the past decade. Speech recognition has been one of the most exciting areas of the signal processing. Mixed transform is a useful tool for speech signal processing; it is developed for its abilities of improvement in feature extraction. Speech recognition includes three important stages, preprocessing, feature extraction, and classification. Recognition accuracy is so affected by the features extraction stage; therefore different models of mixed transform for feature extraction were proposed. The properties of the recorded isolated word will be 1-D, which achieve the conversion of each 1-D word into a 2-D form. The second step of the word recognizer requires, the

One of the wellbore instability problems in vertical wells are breakouts in Zubair oilfield. Breakouts, if exceeds its critical limits will produce problems such as loss circulation which will add to the non-productive time (NPT) thus increasing loss in costs and in total revenues. In this paper, three of the available rock failure criteria (Mohr-Coulomb, Mogi-Coulomb and Modified-Lade) are used to study and predict the occurrence of the breakouts. It is found that there is an increase over the allowable breakout limit in breakout width in Tanuma shaly formation and it was predicted using Mohr-Coulomb criterion. An increase in the pore pressure was predicted in Tanuma shaly formation, thus; a new mud weight and casing pr

As they are the smallest functional parts of the muscle, motor units (MUs) are considered as the basic building blocks of the neuromuscular system. Monitoring MU recruitment, de-recruitment, and firing rate (by either invasive or surface techniques) leads to the understanding of motor control strategies and of their pathological alterations. EMG signal decomposition is the process of identification and classification of individual motor unit action potentials (MUAPs) in the interference pattern detected with either intramuscular or surface electrodes. Signal processing techniques were used in EMG signal decomposition to understand fundamental and physiological issues. Many techniques have been developed to decompose intramuscularly detec