Background: University dental students perceived a higher level of stress prior to the final exam associated with raised salivary alpha-amylase levels which could be considered as a useful noninvasive biomarker for measuring acute stress. Using a Helkimo anamnestic and clinical dysfunction scoring for temporomandibular disorders can give a better insight about the association of this marker and temporomandibular disorders. The aim of this study was to evaluation level of salivary alpha-amylase in stressor students with temporomandibular disorders and the relation between the marker in relation to temporomandibular disorders severity. This might give a better understanding to the role of psychological stress as an etiological factor for developing temporomandibular joint problems. Materials and Methods: A total eighty participants aged between 20 to 24 were recruited for this study. The participants were University dental students under graduate students at final examination period who were examined and gave saliva samples in final examination period. Salivary assay kits as alpha-amylase was used to measure those variable and a Helkimo anamnestic and clinical dysfunction scoring for temporomandibular disorders. Results: The group of participants with stress and temporomandibular disorders showed significantly higher levels of salivary alpha-amylase than the control group, the salivary alpha-amylase has statistically non-significant correlation with Helkimo anamnestic categories (Di-I mild, Di-II moderate and Di-III severe. Salivary alpha-amylase levels show non-significant and weak association with two categories of clinical dysfunction criteria in Helkimo index system, which are Muscle pain and temporomandibular joint pain on palpation. Conclusion: This study concluded that University students perceived a high level of stress before the final examination. Salivary alpha-amylase is now the stress biomarker that is most often used to measure acute stress. Helkimo anamnestic and clinical dysfunction scoring criteria for still the pioneer for measuring a TMD.
Objective: To study the effect of epidural spinal injection over one year in case of spinal stenosis. Methodology: This prospective study included 566 patients with spinal stenosis seen at Al-Kindy Teaching and Al-Sader, Hospitals who were treated by local epidural steroid injection. They were followed up for at least five subsequent visits after seven days, one month, three months, six months, and one year to assess efficacy. Result: Mean age of patients was 49.5 years, with a predominance of females (65%). L4/L5 was the most involved level in the spinal stenosis (70%). Grade II stenosis accounted for (45.4%) of cases. The pairwise comparison revealed that there was significant decrease in proportions of patients with pain in day
... Show MoreThis paper proposes a new approach, of Clustering Ultrasound images using the Hybrid Filter (CUHF) to determine the gender of the fetus in the early stages. The possible advantage of CUHF, a better result can be achieved when fuzzy c-mean FCM returns incorrect clusters. The proposed approach is conducted in two steps. Firstly, a preprocessing step to decrease the noise presented in ultrasound images by applying the filters: Local Binary Pattern (LBP), median, median and discrete wavelet (DWT),(median, DWT & LBP) and (median & Laplacian) ML. Secondly, implementing Fuzzy C-Mean (FCM) for clustering the resulted images from the first step. Amongst those filters, Median & Laplace has recorded a better accuracy. Our experimental evaluation on re
... Show MoreThe aerodynamic characteristics of the forward swept wing aircraft have been studied theoretically and experimentally. Low order panel method with the Dirichlet boundary condition have been used to solve the case of the steady, inviscid and compressible flow. Experimentally, a model was manufactured from wood to carry out the tests. The primary objective of the experimental work was the measurements of the wake dimensions and orientation, velocity defect along the wake and the wake thickness. A blower type low speed (open jet) wind tunnel was used in the experimental work. The mean velocity at the test section was (9.3 m/s) and the Reynolds number based on the mean aerodynamic chord and the mean velocity was (0.46x105). The measurements sho
... Show MoreABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Estrogens has traditionally been known as the female hormone, but this idea has been challenged in early 1990’s and an essential physiological role for estrogen in male fertility was identified. Phytoestrogens are naturally occurring non-steroidal plant chemicals that can act like the female hormone estrogen. The herbs ( anise alfalfa and vervain ) chosen in this study contain phytoestrogens. OBJECTIVE: Previous studies demonstrated controversy of the effects of phytoestrogens on the rat testes .Hence, the present investigation was undertaken to investigate the influence of typical dose of herbs containing phytoestrogen on the rat testis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty-four apparently normal mature male rats we
... Show MoreWe present a case of congenital of flexor pollicis longus agenesis without thenar hypoplasia in a 12-year-old girl with no history of trauma. Two-staged corrective surgery was planned. In the first stage, the flexor pulley was reconstructed using silicone followed by the second stage 3 months later when flexor pollicis longus reconstruction was performed using tendon transfer of the flexor digitorum superficialis. The patient completed post-operative physiotherapy and the result of the surgical treatment in both functional and cosmetic aspects was, in the authors’ opinion, excellent.
The increasing availability of computing power in the past two decades has been use to develop new techniques for optimizing solution of estimation problem. Today's computational capacity and the widespread availability of computers have enabled development of new generation of intelligent computing techniques, such as our interest algorithm, this paper presents one of new class of stochastic search algorithm (known as Canonical Genetic' Algorithm ‘CGA’) for optimizing the maximum likelihood function strategy is composed of three main steps: recombination, mutation, and selection. The experimental design is based on simulating the CGA with different values of are compared with those of moment method. Based on MSE value obtained from bot
... Show MoreClassical cryptography systems exhibit major vulnerabilities because of the rapid development of quan tum computing algorithms and devices. These vulnerabilities were mitigated utilizing quantum key distribution (QKD), which is based on a quantum no-cloning algorithm that assures the safe generation and transmission of the encryption keys. A quantum computing platform, named Qiskit, was utilized by many recent researchers to analyze the security of several QKD protocols, such as BB84 and B92. In this paper, we demonstrate the simulation and implementation of a modified multistage QKD protocol by Qiskit. The simulation and implementation studies were based on the “local_qasm” simulator and the “FakeVigo” backend, respectively. T
... Show MoreBackground: Selenium-73 with half- life of 7.15 hour emits β+ in nature and has six stable isotopes which are ( 74Se,76Se,77Se,78Se,80Se and 82Se ). Selenium-73 has many applications in technology and radioselenium compounds of metallic have found various applications in medicine. Objective: To make a comparison between different reactions that produced cross sections of Se-73 radioisotopes. Subjects and methods: The feasibility of the production of Selenium -73 via various nuclear reactions was investigated. Excitation functions of 73Se production by the reactions of 75As (p,3n), 169Tm( d,x), 74Se, natSe, natBr (p,x) , 75As (d,4n), natGe (3He,x), 70Ge (α, n), and 72Ge (α, 3n) and neutron capture were calculated using the avail
... Show MoreThis paper proposes a new approach, of Clustering Ultrasound images using the Hybrid Filter (CUHF) to determine the gender of the fetus in the early stages. The possible advantage of CUHF, a better result can be achieved when fuzzy c-mean FCM returns incorrect clusters. The proposed approach is conducted in two steps. Firstly, a preprocessing step to decrease the noise presented in ultrasound images by applying the filters: Local Binary Pattern (LBP), median, median and discrete wavelet (DWT), (median, DWT & LBP) and (median & Laplacian) ML. Secondly, implementing Fuzzy C-Mean (FCM) for clustering the resulted images from the first step. Amongst those filters, Median & Lap