Objectives: Dickkopf-1 (DKK-1) is WNT/b-catenin pathway antagonist which plays a detrimental role in the development of diabetic retinopathy (DR). This research aimed to assess serum DKK-1 levels in diabetic patients who have and have not developed DR and, compare them with the control subjects finding out whether we can use it as an indicator for DR early diagnosis and to find out which one of the widely used two groups of antidiabetic treatments had the greater effect on this biomarker and hence on the progression of DR. Methods: The study participants were divided into two subgroups: First, 70 patients (36 male, 34 female) with type 2 diabetes mellitus, among them 35 patients diagnosed with DR and 35 with no evidence of DR, and s

This paper presents a vibration suppression control design of cantilever beam using two piezoelectric ‎patches. One patch was used as ‎an actuator element, while the other was used as a sensor. The controller design was designed via the balance realization reduction method to elect the reduced order model that is most controllable and observable. ‎the sliding mode observer was designed to estimate six states from the reduced order model but three states are only used in the control law. Estimating a number of states larger than that used is in order to increase the estimation accuracy. Moreover, the state ‎estimation error is proved bounded. An ‎optimal LQR controller is designed then using the ‎estimated states with the slid

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Two new nonsymmetrical mesogenic homologous series of terminal substituent ether (series [Vn]) and carboxy (series [VIn]) incorporating azobenzene and 1,3,4-oxadiazole group were synthesized. Both series have been All compounds thus isolated were purified and characterized by elemental analysis, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, 1H NMR, along with thermal analysis and texture observation using Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Polarizing Optical Microscopy (POM), respectively. All compounds of the first series exhibited liquid crystalline properties. The homologues [V1]-[V3] display a nematic mesophase, the compounds [V4]-[V7] exhibit a dimorphism behavior, nematic (N) and smectic A (SmA) mesophases, the compounds [V8] and

    The search included a comparison between two etchands for etch CR-39 nuclear track detector, by the calculation of bulk etch rate (Vb) which is one of the track etching parameters, by two measuring methods (thichness and change mass). The first type, is the solution prepared  from solving NaOH in Ethanol (NaOH/Ethanol) by varied normalities  under temperature(55ËšC)and etching time (30 min) then comparated with the second type the solution prepared from solving NaOH in water (NaOH/Water) by varied normalities with (70ËšC) and etching time (60 min) . All detectors were irradiated with (5.48 Mev) α-Particles from an 241Am source in during (10 min). The results that Vb would increase with the increase of

In this paper, Bayes estimators of Poisson distribution have been derived by using two loss functions: the squared error loss function and the proposed exponential loss function in this study, based on different priors classified as the two different informative prior distributions represented by erlang and inverse levy prior distributions and non-informative prior for the shape parameter of Poisson distribution. The maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) of the Poisson distribution has also been derived. A simulation study has been fulfilled to compare the accuracy of the Bayes estimates with the corresponding maximum likelihood estimate (MLE) of the Poisson distribution based on the root mean squared error (RMSE) for different cases of the

Two Prototypes of Transversely Excited at atmospheric pressure (TEA) Nitrogen laser systems (One Stage Blumlein Circuit and Two Stage Blumlein Circuit) were fabricated and operated. High voltage power supply with variable operating voltage (0-20 kv) and operating current (1-3A) was built and tested successfully. The gas flow rate of 15 L/ min and 10 L/ min for OSBC and TSBC was used. The performance of the fabricated systems was studied extensively reaching to the optimum operating conditions. The obtained laser output energy for the first system has linear relationship with the applied voltage. The maximum output energy was about (1.14 mJ) with (10.40) ns pulse duration and the half-wave divergence angle was about (0.1455 m rad). In the

The paper uses the Direct Synthesis (DS) method for tuning the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller for controlling the DC servo motor. Two algorithms are presented for enhancing the performance of the suggested PID controller. These algorithms are Back-Propagation Neural Network and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The performance and characteristics of DC servo motor are explained. The simulation results that obtained by using Matlab program show that the steady state error is eliminated with shorter adjusted time when using these algorithms with PID controller. A comparative between the two algorithms are described in this paper to show their effectiveness, which is found that the PSO algorithm gives be