Background: Prolapsed intervertebral disc is an important and common cause of low backache. MRI has now become universally accepted investigation for prolapsed intervertebral disc. We, however, regularly come across situations, when MRI shows diffuse disc bulges, even at multiple levels, which cannot be correlated clinically and when such cases are operated, no significant disc prolapse is found resulting in negative exploration. Objective: To evaluate the role of M.R.I. finding not only for diagnosis of disc herniation at lumbar region but also for localization the level of herniation Methods: A prospective study on seventy five symptomatic low backache and MRI confirmed prolapsed intervertebral disc patients at lumbo-sacral region were op

Introduction and Aim: Diabetes mellitus patients almost always struggle with a metabolic condition known as chronic hyperglycemia. According to the World Health Organization, osteoporosis is a progressive systemic skeletal disorder that is characterized by decreasing bone mass and microstructural breakdown of bone tissue that increases susceptibility to fracture and increased risk of breaking a bone. Here, we aimed to compare the levels of CatK and total oxidative state in patients with diabetes and osteoporosis among the female Iraqi population and study the possible relationship between them. Materials and Methods: This study included 40 females with diabetes (Group G1), 40 with diabetes and osteoporosis (Group G2) and 40 normal healthy f

In this research the results of applying Artificial Neural Networks with modified activation function to perform the online and offline identification of four Degrees of Freedom (4-DOF) Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) manipulator robot will be described. The proposed model of identification strategy consists of a feed-forward neural network with a modified activation function that operates in parallel with the SCARA robot model. Feed-Forward Neural Networks (FFNN) which have been trained online and offline have been used, without requiring any previous knowledge about the system to be identified. The activation function that is used in the hidden layer in FFNN is a modified version of the wavelet function. This approach ha

     The hiding of information has become of great importance in recent times. With dissemination through the internet, and communication through satellites, information needs to be secure. Therefore, a new algorithm is proposed that enables secret messages to be embedded inside satellite images, wherein images of any size or format can be hidden, using a system’s image compression techniques. This operation is executed in three main steps: first phase – the original image is converted into a raster image; second phase– steganography, in which a binary secret message is hidden inside a raster image, using a 4×4 array as the secret key; and third phase– compre

The ability to inhibit corrosion of low carbon steel in a salt solution (3.5%NaCl) has been checked with three real expired drugs (Cloxacillin, Amoxicillin, Ceflaxin) with variable concentrations (0, 250, 500, 750) mg/L were examined in the weight loss. The inhibition efficiency of the Cloxacillin 750 mg/L showed the highest value (82.8125 %) and the best inhibitor of the rest of the antibiotics. The different concentrations of Cloxacillin drug (0, 250, 500, 750) mg/L and temperature (25, 35, 45, 55) ^oC were studied as variables with potentiodynamic polarization, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) for surface morphology and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) depending on current values and the resistance of charge to

This paper introduces a non-conventional approach with multi-dimensional random sampling to solve a cocaine abuse model with statistical probability. The mean Latin hypercube finite difference (MLHFD) method is proposed for the first time via hybrid integration of the classical numerical finite difference (FD) formula with Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) technique to create a random distribution for the model parameters which are dependent on time [Formula: see text]. The LHS technique gives advantage to MLHFD method to produce fast variation of the parameters’ values via number of multidimensional simulations (100, 1000 and 5000). The generated Latin hypercube sample which is random or non-deterministic in nature is further integ

Flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is one of the instances in flexible manufacturing systems. It is considered as a very complex to control. Hence generating a control system for this problem domain is difficult. FJSP inherits the job-shop scheduling problem characteristics. It has an additional decision level to the sequencing one which allows the operations to be processed on any machine among a set of available machines at a facility. In this article, we present Artificial Fish Swarm Algorithm with Harmony Search for solving the flexible job shop scheduling problem. It is based on the new harmony improvised from results obtained by artificial fish swarm algorithm. This improvised solution is sent to comparison to an overall best

Texture is an important characteristic for the analysis of many types of images because it provides a rich source of information about the image. Also it provides a key to understand basic mechanisms that underlie human visual perception. In this paper four statistical feature of texture (Contrast, Correlation, Homogeneity and Energy) was calculated from gray level Co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) of equal blocks (30×30) from both tumor tissue and normal tissue of three samples of CT-scan image of patients with lung cancer. It was found that the contrast feature is the best to differentiate between textures, while the correlation is not suitable for comparison, the energy and homogeneity features for tumor tissue always greater than its valu

Heavy oil is classified as unconventional oil resource because of its difficulty to recover in its natural state, difficulties in transport and difficulties in marketing it. Upgrading solution to the heavy oil has positive impact technically and economically specially when it will be a competitive with conventional oils from the marketing prospective. Developing Qaiyarah heavy oil field was neglected in the last five decades, the main reason was due to the low quality of the crude oil resulted in the high viscosity and density of the crude oil in the field which was and still a major challenge putting them on the major stream line of production in Iraq. The low quality of the crude properties led to lower oil prices in the global markets