Background: Chronic cigarette smoking is one of the major risk factors for coronary artery disease. However, it has additional cardiac adverse effects independent of coronary atherosclerosis. Patient and Methods: After informed consent and perm- ission from the review board of the hospital, 80 healthy subjects who were classified as smokers or non-smokers were included in the study. They were examined by standard echocardiography protocol which was followed by two-dimensional speckle tracking to assess the functions of the right ventricle. Results: The tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE) was significantly reduced in smokers as compared to non-smokers (P < 0.05). The tricuspid flow peak late diastolic velocity (A wave) was sig

This study aimed to assess the possible association of oxytocin (OXT) gene with reproductive traits in two groups of Awassi ewes that differ in their reproductive potentials. Sheep were genotyped using PCR—single-stranded conformation polymorphism approach. Three genotypes were detected in exon 2, CC, CA, and AA, and a novel SNP was identified with a missense effect on oxytocin (c.188C > A → p.Arg55Leu). A significant (p < 0.01) association of p.Arg55Leu with the twinning rate was found as ewes with AA and CA genotypes exhibited, respectively a lower twinning ratio than those with the wild-type CC genotype. The deleterious impact of p.Arg55Leu was demonstrated by all in silico tools that were utilized to assess the effect of this varian

Constructing a fine 3D geomodel for complex giant reservoir is a crucial task for hydrocarbon volume assessment and guiding for optimal development. The case under study is Mishrif reservoir of Halfaya oil field, which is an Iraqi giant carbonate reservoir. Mishrif mainly consists of limestone rocks which belong to Late Cenomanian age. The average gross thickness of formation is about 400m. In this paper, a high-resolution 3D geological model has been built using Petrel software that can be utilized as input for dynamic simulation. The model is constructed based on geological, geophysical, pertophysical and engineering data from about 60 available wells to characterize the structural, stratigraphic, and properties distribution along

Constructing a fine 3D geomodel for complex giant reservoir is a crucial task for hydrocarbon volume assessment and guiding for optimal development. The case under study is Mishrif reservoir of Halfaya oil field, which is an Iraqi giant carbonate reservoir. Mishrif mainly consists of limestone rocks which belong to Late Cenomanian age. The average gross thickness of formation is about 400m. In this paper, a high-resolution 3D geological model has been built using Petrel software that can be utilized as input for dynamic simulation. The model is constructed based on geological, geophysical, pertophysical and engineering data from about 60 available wells to characterize the structural, stratigraphic, and properties distri

Neuroendocrine differentiation has been mentioned in many cancers of non-neuroendocrinal organs, involving the gastrointestinal tract. In contrast, the correlation of focally diffused neuroendocrine differentiation in colorectal adenocarcinoma with neuroendocrine cell hyperplasia has not been somewhat reported. The objective of this research is to study the relationship between neuroendocrine cell hyperplasia and neuroendocrine differentiation in colorectal adenocarcinoma and to find the correlation of neuroendocrine differentiation and VEGF expression with clinicopathological parameters of colorectal adenocarcinoma. Methods employed in the current study were including eighty-one patients with colorectal cancer. Formalin fixed paraffin e

As a result of the exacerbation of the problem of water pollution, research was directed towards studying the treatment using ceramic membranes, which proved to be highly effective in treating all water sources. The research aims to study the possibility of preparing a new type of ceramic membranes from Syrian zeolite that was not previously used in this field. In this research, ceramic membranes were prepared from Syrian raw zeolite in several stages. Zeolite sample was characterized, grinded, mixed with boric acid, pressed to form desks, treated thermally according to experiment program, finally coated with silver nanoparticles. Specifications of prepared membranes were determined according to reference methods, effectiveness of prepar

Displacement is a problem that worries the human conscience and has received the attention of the international community. Furthermore, it has become one of the most urgent issues nowadays, especially when the number of displaced people in different countries are increased because of the causes of displacement and their political, economic, environmental, social and psychological effects. Iraq is one of the countries where displacement has taken place in several governorates, according to United Nations and International Organization for Migration (IOM), Iraq is considered the second largest country in the world after Syria in terms of the number of displaced people in 2015. Gratitude, a positive emotional response to benevolence, is a m

<p>Currently, breast cancer is one of the most common cancers and a main reason of women death worldwide particularly in<strong> </strong>developing countries such as Iraq. our work aims to predict the type of tumor whether benign or malignant through models that were built using logistic regression and neural networks and we hope it will help doctors in detecting the type of breast tumor. Four models were set using binary logistic regression and two different types of artificial neural networks namely multilayer perceptron MLP and radial basis function RBF. Evaluation of validated and trained models was done using several performance metrics like accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and AUC (area under receiver ope