Background: Mouth breathing can lead to introduce cold, dry unprepared air that insults the tissue of oral cavity, nasopharynx and lung, leading in turn to pathological changes in oronasal cavity, nasopharyngeal and other respiratory tissue, mouth breathing associated with nasal obstruction may lead to many health problems, in particular oral health problems such as inflammation of gingiva, oral dryness, change in oral environment that may decrease pH, salivary flow rate and increase bacteria and dental caries.Aims of the present study were to assess the oral health condition among mouth breather associated with nasal obstruction, including dental caries, oral cleanliness and gingival health condition as well as to evaluate the changes in salivary physical characteristics and salivary mutans streptococci counts, and their relation to oral variables in comparison to a control group. Materials and Methods: Thirty patients with mouth breathing associated with nasal obstruction (15 females and 15 males) were selected as a study group with an age range (18-22) years old, all subjects were examined by ENT specialist to confirm mouth breathing. A 30 gender and age matched healthy looking subjects without nasal obstruction were selected as control. The diagnosis and recording of dental caries was according to severity of dental caries lesion through the application of D1_4MFS(Manji et al., 1989). Plaque index of (Silness and Loe, 1964) was used for plaque assessment; gingival index of (Loe and Silness, 1963) was used for gingival health condition assessment. Stimulated salivary samples were collected according to (Tenovuo and Lagerlof, 1996) and the following variables were recorded: microbiological analysis included the salivary counts of mutans streptococci, salivary flow rate, salivary pH (potential of hydrogen) and then measurement of salivary viscosity by using Ostwald's viscometer. Results: Results of the present study showed that the mouth breathing group had statistically highly significant, higher plaque and gingival indices than nose breathing group (P<0.01) with a positive highly significant correlation between them in mouth breathing and nose breathing groups (r=0.56, r= 0.64, respectively).The salivary flow rate was lower among mouth breathing with highly significant difference than nose breathing (P<0.01), also salivary pH was lower among mouth breathing but with significant differencecompare to nose breathing (P<0.05); statistically a negative highly significant correlation was recorded among mouth breathing group between salivary flow rate with gingival index (r= -0.56). It has been found that salivary viscosity was not statistically significant difference between mouth breathing group and nose breathing group. The salivary viscosity was found to be inversely significantly correlated with salivary flow rate among mouth breathing group (r= -0.38). While it was positively not significantly correlated with plaque index, gingival index and counts of mutans streptococci among mouth breathing group. Data analysis of the present study showed that salivary mutans streptococci counts among mouth breathing group were higher than that among nose breathing group, difference was statistically highly significant (P<0.01). Conclusion: Mouth breathing associated with nasal obstruction may have an effect on oral health status, leading to an increase in periodontal disease and changes in dental caries.
Recent growth in transport and wireless communication technologies has aided the evolution of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The ITS is based on different types of transportation modes like road, rail, ocean and aviation. Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a technology that considers moving vehicles as nodes in a network to create a wireless communication network. VANET has emerged as a resourceful approach to enhance the road safety. Road safety has become a critical issue in recent years. Emergency incidents such as accidents, heavy traffic and road damages are the main causes of the inefficiency of the traffic flow. These occurrences do not only create the congestion on the road but also increase the fuel consumption and p
... Show More
(5)
(4)
The effect of electrolysis operating parameters on the removal efficiency of cadmium from a simulated wastewater was studied by adopting response surface methodology combined with Box–Behnken Design. As a new electrode design, spiral-wound woven wire mesh rotating cylinder electrode was used for cadmium removal. Current (240–400 mA), rotation speed (200–1000 rpm), initial cadmium concentration (200–600ppm), and cathode mesh number (30–60) were chosen as independent variables while the removal efficiency of cadmium was considered as a response function. The results revealed that the rotation speed has the major effect on the removal efficiency of cadmium. Regression analysis showed good fit of the experimental data to the second-or
... Show More
(28)
(22)
A robust video-bitrate adaptive scheme at client-aspect plays a significant role in keeping a good quality of video streaming technology experience. Video quality affects the amount of time the video has turned off playing due to the unfilled buffer state. Therefore to maintain a video streaming continuously with smooth bandwidth fluctuation, a video buffer structure based on adapting the video bitrate is considered in this work. Initially, the video buffer structure is formulated as an optimal control-theoretic problem that combines both video bitrate and video buffer feedback signals. While protecting the video buffer occupancy from exceeding the limited operating level can provide continuous video str
... Show More
(1)
(2)
(1)
Background: Painful elbow joint over the lateral epicondyle especially with resisted wrist extension are common signs of lateral epicondyle tendinopathy, also called tennis elbow.
Objective: To evaluate the clinical outcome of local platelet rich plasma (PRP) injection in patients with chronic tennis elbow compared with a steroid (Depomedrol 40 mg) injection.
Methods: A total of 88 patients with chronic tennis elbow were treated at Al-Kindy Teaching Hospital and private clinics. All patients had chronic pain for about 24 weeks or more and had failed first line treatment. The patients dividing into two groups, Group A injected with PRP (n = 44), and group B injected with d
... Show More
Background: Immediate postpartum contraceptive and post abortion contraception methods are effective safe methods and are becoming a standard practice in many countries, yet it is not widely used in Iraq.
Aims: this study: is designed to assess the attitude and willingness of women to immediate contraception after giving birth or abortion and their satisfaction to previous use.
Methods and Material: Four hundred thirty-four women were surveyed in the labor word immediately after giving birth/ abortion. Their knowledge, attitude and contraception use were assessed according to the response they reported to a given questionnaire.
Results: women were not sure abo
... Show More
In this paper, a compact multiband printed dipole antenna is presented as a candidate for use in wireless communication applications. The proposed fractal antenna design is based on the second level tent transformation. The space-filling property of this fractal geometry permits producing longer lengths in a more compact size. Theoretical performance of this antenna has been calculated using the commercially available software IE3D from Zeland Software Inc. This electromagnetic simulator is based on the method of moments (MoM). The proposed dipole antenna has been found to possess a considerable size reduction compared with the conventional printed or wire dipole antenna designed at the same design frequency and using the same substrate
... Show MoreThis study presents a practical method for solving fractional order delay variational problems. The fractional derivative is given in the Caputo sense. The suggested approach is based on the Laplace transform and the shifted Legendre polynomials by approximating the candidate function by the shifted Legendre series with unknown coefficients yet to be determined. The proposed method converts the fractional order delay variational problem into a set of (n ＋ 1) algebraic equations, where the solution to the resultant equation provides us the unknown coefficients of the terminated series that have been utilized to approximate the solution to the considered variational problem. Illustrative examples are given to show that the recommended appro
... Show More
(4)
(1)
(1)
Melanoma, a highly malignant form of skin cancer, affects individuals of all genders and is associated with high mortality rates, especially in advanced stages. The use of tele-dermatology has emerged as a proficient diagnostic approach for skin lesions and is particularly beneficial in rural areas with limited access to dermatologists. However, accurately, and efficiently segmenting melanoma remains a challenging task due to the significant diversity observed in the morphology, pigmentation, and dimensions of cutaneous nevi. To address this challenge, we propose a novel approach called DenseUNet-169 with a dilated convolution encoder-decoder for automatic segmentation of RGB dermascopic images. By incorporating dilated convolution,
... Show More
(6)
(4)