There are many ways to communicate a story, one can tell it, sing it, act it, write it, film it and can draw it. Each form of storytelling has its unique characteristics that separate it from the other forms. These distinguishing characteristics of each form does not indicate the superiority of one form over the other, on the contrary, it indicates the human ability to be creative on many levels. As students of literature, only the written form of a story is taken into account. One reason for the negligence of other forms of storytelling might be that singing and filming a story is not related to literature. But there has been a form of storytelling that uses words along with pictures which eventually became a genre of novels called graphic novel1. Graphic novels are "book – length, high quality comic books that introduce children's and adults to a wide range of literary fiction and nonfiction subjects."2 Comic books, on the other hand, are sequential narratives that are supported by graphics and images thus combining words with images to form a narrative.3 It has a distinctive form compared to other types of literature. Usually comic books tackle light, comic themes printed on glossy magazine – like paper, sold in bookstands and are relatively short.4 While graphic novels, on the other hand, tackle more mature and dark themes, are printed on book – like papers, are sold in bookstores and they are longer. Thus, the term graphic novel was used to distinguish it from comic books.5
The marine collagens are biocompatible and biodegradable materials that are considered as a biomimetic approach for tissue regeneration. This study evaluated the effect of daily consumption of marine collagen supplement drink on enamel white spot lesions (WSLs), comparing the results against Regenerate system and Sylc air abrasion methods. Fifty human enamel slabs were allocated into five groups (n = 10 per group): non-treated (sound); non-treated (WSLs, 8% methylcellulose gel with 0.1 M lactic acid (pH 4.6) at 37 °C for 21 days); and three treated surfaces with marine collagen; Regenerate system; and Sylc air abrasion. The treatment lasted for 28 days followed by four weeks’ storage in artificial saliva (pH = 7.0, 37 °C). Evalu
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Support vector machines (SVMs) are supervised learning models that analyze data for classification or regression. For classification, SVM is widely used by selecting an optimal hyperplane that separates two classes. SVM has very good accuracy and extremally robust comparing with some other classification methods such as logistics linear regression, random forest, k-nearest neighbor and naïve model. However, working with large datasets can cause many problems such as time-consuming and inefficient results. In this paper, the SVM has been modified by using a stochastic Gradient descent process. The modified method, stochastic gradient descent SVM (SGD-SVM), checked by using two simulation datasets. Since the classification of different ca
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Ecological risk assessment of mercury contaminant has a means to analyze the ecological risk aspect of ecosystem using the potential impact of mercury pollution in soil, water and organism. The ecological risk assessment in a coastal area can be shown by mangrove zonation, clustering and interpolation of mercury accumulation. This research aims to analyze ecological risk assessment of potential mercury (including bioaccumulation and translocation) using indicators of species distribution, clustering, zonation and interpolation of mercury accumulation. The results showed that the Segara Anakan had a high risk of mercury pollution, using indicators like as the potential of mercury contaminant in water body was 0137±0.0137 ppm, substrate a
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Due to restrictions and limitations on agricultural water worldwide, one of the most effective ways to conserve water in this sector is to reduce the water losses and improve irrigation uniformity. Nowadays, the low-pressure sprinkler has been widely used to replace the high-pressure impact sprinklers in lateral move sprinkler irrigation systems due to its low operating cost and high efficiency. However, the hazard of surface runoff represents the biggest obstacle for low-pressure sprinkler systems. Most researchers have used the pulsing technique to apply variable-rate irrigation to match the crop water needs within a normal application rate that does not produce runoff. This research introduces a variable pulsed irrigation algorit
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Abstract- Asymptomatic or clinically silent kidney stones are possibly serious because, in their expected passage, they may cause infection, obstruction and renal impairment. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of silent kidney stones in a sample of Baghdad population and consider how this value could affect the justification for a screening system. To our best knowledge, this is the first study of its kind conducted in Iraq. We investigated 714 consecutive patients who sustained an abdominal ultrasound at our hospital with further kidney screening. All these patients did not have clinical signs and symptoms of nephrolithiasis. Age, sex, the indication for ultrasound, the size, side, and the number of the disco
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Background: Despite extensive efforts towards its elimination, Hepatitis B virus (HBV) continues to be a major concern, posing risk of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in those infected. Therefore, there is a need for reliable biomarkers to accurately assess the infection. While liver enzymes remain the standard diagnostic tools, the anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor interleukin-37 (IL-37) has emerged as a potential biomarker. Aims: To assess the relationship between serum IL-37 and liver enzymes in HBV patients. Methods: Liver enzymes were measured by Fujifilm’s dry chemistry system (Fuji Dri-Chem), whereas Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) was utilized for determination of IL-37 levels. A total of 100 patients
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Several stress-strain models were used to predict the strengths of steel fiber reinforced concrete, which are distinctive of the material. However, insufficient research has been done on the influence of hybrid fiber combinations (comprising two or more distinct fibers) on the characteristics of concrete. For this reason, the researchers conducted an experimental program to determine the stress-strain relationship of 30 concrete samples reinforced with two distinct fibers (a hybrid of polyvinyl alcohol and steel fibers), with compressive strengths ranging from 40 to 120 MPa. A total of 80% of the experimental results were used to develop a new empirical stress-strain model, which was accomplished through the application of the parti
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