Background: The COVID-19 virus outbreak had a massive effect on many parts of people's lives, as they were advised to quarantine and lockdown to prevent the virus from spreading, which had a big impact on people's mental health, anxiety, and stress. Many internal and external factors lead to stress. This negatively influences the body's homeostasis. As a result, stress may affect the body's capacity to use energy to defend against pathogens. Many recent investigations have found substantial links between human mental stress and the production of hormones, prohormones, and/or immunological chemicals. some of these researches have verified the link between stress and salivary cortisol levels. The aim of this study is to measure salivary cortisol as a stress biomarker as well as a total viable count of salivary bacterial microbiome among COVID-19 patients. Materials and methods: a sample of 84 adults patients was collected who were divided into two groups: the COVID-19 group consists of 42 patients and the COVID-19 free group which consists of 42 subjects. All subjects undergo a PCR test to confirm their health status. The collection of Un-stimulated saliva was done. Laboratory investigations were carried out to measure the total viable count of the salivary bacterial microbiome by culturing on Brain Heart Infusion Agar and to evaluate the salivary cortisol level using cortisol kit (Elecsys Cortisol II). Results: SPSS version 21 was used for statistical analysis. According to the statistical analysis, the salivary cortisol and total viable count of salivary bacterial microbiome values were substantially greater in the COVID-19 group than in the COVID-19 free group. Conclusion: A positive association was found between salivary cortisol and the total viable count of the salivary bacterial microbiome. So, when the concentration of salivary cortisol is elevated in the COVID-19 group, the level of the total viable count of the salivary bacterial microbiome is also elevated.
The aim of the research is to identify the suitability of a patrol model in evaluating the financial performance of Iraqi banks. The financial reports of five Iraqi commercial banks were approved as a sample for research for the period from 2015 to 2020. The most common financial ratios were adopted for the purpose of measuring the five elements of the model, which are capital adequacy, profitability, credit risk, bankal efficiency and liquidity. The results showed the possibility of using the PATROL model in evaluating the performance of Iraqi banks, as it gave a realistic image of the reality of Iraqi banks in terms of high capital adequacy index and high liquidity, as well as fluctuation in profitability index, not to mention the prob
... Show MoreTwitter data analysis is an emerging field of research that utilizes data collected from Twitter to address many issues such as disaster response, sentiment analysis, and demographic studies. The success of data analysis relies on collecting accurate and representative data of the studied group or phenomena to get the best results. Various twitter analysis applications rely on collecting the locations of the users sending the tweets, but this information is not always available. There are several attempts at estimating location based aspects of a tweet. However, there is a lack of attempts on investigating the data collection methods that are focused on location. In this paper, we investigate the two methods for obtaining location-based dat
... Show MoreFlaxseed from the flax plant (Linum usitatissimum), which has been cultivated for domestic use since prehistoric times. This study aims to investigate presence of antibacterial effect of flaxseed extract against selected oral pathogen in-vitro.
Granular Pile Anchor (GPA) is one of the innovative foundation techniques, devised for mitigating heave of footing resulting from the expansive soils. This research attempts to study the heave behavior of (GPA-Foundation System) in expansive soil. Laboratory tests have been conducted on an experimental model in addition to a series of numerical modeling and analysis using the finite element package PLAXIS software. The effects of different parameters, such as (GPA) length (L) and diameter (D), footing diameter (B), expansive clay layer thickness (H) and presence of non-expansive clay are studied. The results proved the efficiency of (GPA) in reducing the heave of exp
... Show MoreHydrocarbon production might cause changes in dynamic reservoir properties. Thus the consideration of the mechanical stability of a formation under different conditions of drilling or production is a very important issue, and basic mechanical properties of the formation should be determined. There is considerable evidence, gathered from laboratory measurements in the field of Rock Mechanics, showing a good correlation between intrinsic rock strength and the dynamic elastic constant determined from sonic-velocity and density measurements. The values of the mechanical properties determined from log data, such as the dynamic elastic constants derived from the measurement of the elastic wave velocities in the material, should be more accurate t
... Show MoreThe temperature distributions are to be evaluated for the furnace of Al-Mussaib power plant. Monte Carlo simulation procedure is used to evaluate the radiation heat transfer inside the furnace, where the radiative transfer is the most important process occurring there. Weighted sum of gray-gases model is used to evaluate the radiative properties of the non gray gas in the enclosure. The energy balance equations are applied for each gas, and surface zones, and by solving these equations, both the temperature, and the heat flux are found.
Good degree of accuracy has been obtained, when comparing the results obtained by the simulation with the data of the designing company, and the data obtained by the zonal method. In
... Show MoreIn this paper a modified approach have been used to find the approximate solution of ordinary delay differential equations with constant delay using the collocation method based on Bernstien polynomials.
The research was aimed to identify fruits morphological characteristics of 33 taxa belonging to the Lepidieae tribe from Brassicaceae. The characteristics of the fruit's general shape, apex shape, dimensions, colors, surface ornamentation, and beak were determined, the results indicated the importance of each of those characters in isolated species, In general, all the tribe's fruits were open capsule and short silicula. According to the dimensions of fruit, three species can be distinguished as a group with dimensions greater than 20mm, as in Brossardia, Coluteocarpus, and Didymophysa, and depending on the shape, it was possible to differentiate the species within this group, while the other species were less than 20 mm. in dimensi
... Show MoreTwenty-two of the Starling Sturnus vulgaris Linnaeus, 1758 were collected in Baghdad city during the period from January to September, 2014, and examined for endoparasites. Ten (45.45%) were found infected with either the cestode Passerilepis crenata (Goeze, 1782) (31.81%) or the nematode Dispharynx nasuta (Rudolphi, 1819) (13.63 %). Morphometric and meristic features for these worms were expressed. D. nasuta is recorded here for the first time from S. vulgaris for Iraq.