Background: In young adults, multiple sclerosis is a prevalent chronic inflammatory demyelinating condition. It is characterized by white matter affection, but many individuals also have significant gray matter involvement. A double-inversion recovery pulse (DIR) pattern was recently proposed to improve the visibility of multiple sclerosis lesions. Objective: To find out how well a DIR sequence, FLAIR, and T2-weighted pulse sequences can find MS lesions in the supratentorial and infratentorial regions. Methods: A total of 37 patients with established diagnoses of multiple sclerosis were included in this cross-sectional study. Brain MRI was done using double inversion recovery, T2, and FLAIR sequences. The number of lesions was count

Accurate description of thermodynamic, structural, and electronic properties for bulk and surfaces of ceria (CeO2) necessitates the inclusion of the Hubbard parameter (U) in the density functional theory (DFT) calculations to precisely account for the strongly correlated 4f electrons. Such treatment is a daunting task when attempting to draw a potential energy surface for CeO2-catalyzed reaction. This is due to the inconsistent change in thermo-kinetics parameters of the reaction in reference to the variation in the U values. As an illustrative example, we investigate herein the discrepancy in activation and reaction energies for steps underlying the partial and full hydrogenation of acetylene over the CeO2(111) surface. Overall, we find th

Background: Differentiating flow gaps associated with hypoplastic transverse sinus from venous thrombosis is a diagnostic challenge in brain magnetic resonance imaging with venography.

Objectives: To assess the clinical benefit of anatomical signs to anticipate the side of the dominant transverse sinus.

Patients and Methods: A total of 100 patients underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging with venography at the radiology department /medical city and were retrospectively reviewed for the direction of superior sagittal sinus flow void, inclination of sulcus for the superior sagittal sinus, angulation of the posterior falx and direction of occipital lobe bending in axial non

Background: Vascular complications have been recognized as an important factor in morbidity after diagnostic and percutaneous coronary interventions.
Objectives: This study sought to evaluate vascular complications after diagnostic coronary angiography and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) from the common femoral artery.
Patients and methods: This prospective cohort study was carried out over a year period, from February 2008 till January 2009, at the Iraqi Center for the Heart Disease and Ibn Al-Bitar Hospital for Cardiac Surgery. A total number of 2400 patients underwent 3600 procedures, diagnostic coronary angiography (2196) and PCI(1404) via their common femoral arteries were included in this study.
Result: A total 40

Background: Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Clopidogrel, antiplatelet drug, has been widely used for management of CAD. Arylesterase, the activity of Paraoxonase-1 (PON-1), is mainly contributed in the biotransformation of clopidogrel to its active thiol form. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of receiving clopidogrel drug on the arylesterase activities in CAD patients. The effect of receiving clopidogrel drug on the antioxidant activity of arylesterase was also monitored by determination of malondialdehyde (MDA) level. Methods: One hundred CAD patients, who were followed-up for 5 days after reciving clopidogrel, and 50 healthy volunteers were included in our study

Bearing capacity of a concrete pile in fine grained cohesive soils is affected by the degree of saturation of the surrounding soil through the contribution of the matric suction. In addition, the embedded depth and the roughness of the concrete pile surface (expressed as British Pendulum Number BPN) also have their contribution to the shear strength of the concrete pile, consequently its bearing capacity. Herein, relationships among degree of saturation, pile depth, and surface roughness, were proposed as a mathematical model expressed as an equation where the shear strength of a pile can be predicted in terms of degree of saturation, depth, and BPN. Rel

The ionospheric characteristics exhibit significant variations with the solar cycle, geomagnetic conditions, seasons, latitudes and even local time. Representation of this research focused on global distribution of electron (Te) and ion temperatures (Ti) during great and severe geomagnetic storms (GMS), their daily and seasonally variation for years (2001-2013), variations of electron and ion temperature during GMS with plasma velocity and geographic latitudes. Finally comparison between observed and predicted Te and Ti get from IRI model during the two kinds of storm selected. Data from satellite Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) 850 km altitude are taken for Te, Ti and plasma velocity for different latitudes during great

The Dynamic Load Factor (DLF) is defined as the ratio between the maximum dynamic and static responses in terms of stress, strain, deflection, reaction, etc. DLF adopted by different design codes is based on parameters such as bridge span length, traffic load models, and bridge natural frequency. During the last decades, a lot of researches have been made to study the DLF of simply supported bridges due to vehicle loading. On the other hand, fewer works have been reported on continuous bridges especially with skew supports. This paper focuses on the investigation of the DLF for a highly skewed steel I-girder bridge, namely the US13 Bridge in Delaware State, USA. Field testing under various load passes of a weighed load vehicle was u