Abstract Aim: Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder which affects communication and social interaction of children. It is a heterogeneous disease with various clinical presentations. Some genes are involved in its pathogenesis. It has been suggested that environmental exposure to lead can increase the risk of autism. The aim of our study was to compare blood lead levels among autistic and non-autistic children. Material and Method: This retrospective study included 107 children (60 with autism and 47 without autism) referred from the different Iraqi provinces, in the years 2015, 2016 and 2017, to the poisoning consultation center in Baghdad. Data collection including age, gender, residence, referral source, family history and blood lead l

Digital tampering identification, which detects picture modification, is a significant area of image analysis studies. This area has grown with time with exceptional precision employing machine learning and deep learning-based strategies during the last five years. Synthesis and reinforcement-based learning techniques must now evolve to keep with the research. However, before doing any experimentation, a scientist must first comprehend the current state of the art in that domain. Diverse paths, associated outcomes, and analysis lay the groundwork for successful experimentation and superior results. Before starting with experiments, universal image forensics approaches must be thoroughly researched. As a result, this review of variou

We define L-contraction mapping in the setting of D-metric spaces analogous to L-contraction mappings [1] in complete metric spaces. Also, give a definition for general D- matric spaces.And then prove the existence of fixed point for more general class of mappings in generalized D-metric spaces.

The present study aims to investigate the various request constructions used in Classical Arabic and Modern Arabic language by identifying the differences in their usage in these two different genres. Also, the study attempts to trace the cases of felicitous and infelicitous requests in the Arabic language. Methodologically, the current study employs a web-based corpus tool (Sketch Engine) to analyze different corpora: the first one is Classical Arabic, represented by King Saud University Corpus of Classical Arabic, while the second is The Arabic Web Corpus “arTenTen” representing Modern Arabic. To do so, the study relies on felicity conditions to qualitatively interpret the quantitative data, i.e., following a mixed mode method

Sub-threshold operation has received a lot of attention in limited performance applications.However, energy optimization of sub-threshold circuits should be performed with the concern of the performance limitation of such circuit. In this paper, a dual size design is proposed for energy minimization of sub-threshold CMOS circuits. The optimal downsizing factor is determined and assigned for some gates on the off-critical paths to minimize the energy at the maximum allowable performance. This assignment is performed using the proposed slack based genetic algorithm which is a heuristic-mixed evolutionary algorithm. Some gates are heuristically assigned to the original and the downsized design based on their slack time determined by static tim

We propose a new method for detecting the abnormality in cerebral tissues present within Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI). Present classifier is comprised of cerebral tissue extraction, image division into angular and distance span vectors, acquirement of four features for each portion and classification to ascertain the abnormality location. The threshold value and region of interest are discerned using operator input and Otsu algorithm. Novel brain slices image division is introduced via angular and distance span vectors of sizes 24˚ with 15 pixels. Rotation invariance of the angular span vector is determined. An automatic image categorization into normal and abnormal brain tissues is performed using Support Vector Machine (SVM). St

The advancement of digital technology has increased the deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in our daily life. However, locating sensor nodes is a challenging task in WSNs. Sensing data without an accurate location is worthless, especially in critical applications. The pioneering technique in range-free localization schemes is a sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) method, which utilizes network connectivity to estimate sensor location without additional hardware. This study presents a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art SMC localization schemes. We present the schemes as a thematic taxonomy of localization operation in SMC. Moreover, the critical characteristics of each existing scheme are analyzed to identify its advantages

Autoimmune hepatitis is an inflammatory disease and its incidence has been increasing. The features of hepatitis are the release of inflammatory cytokines, the elevation of AST and ALT, and hepatocyte apoptosis and necrosis. Concanavalin A considered as essential model represents the acute immune-mediated liver damage in rodents. Thymoquinone is well known herbal compound that exert hepatoprotective, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant activity. In this study, we focus on the immunoregulatory and liver protective effect of thymoquinone in a mouse model of concanavalin A-induced liver injury.

Twenty-four male mice were randomly divided into four groups each containing six animals: Negative control group, concanavalin A model group,