Background: Coronary artery disease remains the main cause of death despite several preventive programs. Epicardial adipose tissue is a visceral fat depot of the heart located along the large coronary arteries and on the surface of ventricles and apex. Intima media thickness is commonly recognized as the initial stage in the development of atherosclerosis. The development of ultrasound machines, advances in echocardiographic devices and high resolution transducers facilitate comprehensive analysis of epicardial fat thickness (EFT) and carotid –intima media thickness (C-IMT).
Aim: To investigate the relationship of echocardiographic epicardial fat thickness (EFT) and carotid –intima media thickness (C-IMT) with the severity of coronary artery disease.
Methods: A cross sectional multicenter diagnostic accuracy study carried out at Ibn Al-Nafis Cardiovascular Hospital, Ibn Al- Bitar Cardiology Center and Ghazi Al-Hariri Hospital –Iraqi Center for Cardiology during the period between October 2016 and May 2017 assessing. History regarding demographic data and risk factors was taken. Two dimensional transthoracic echocardiographic measurements were done. EFT was measured from parasternal long axis view perpendicular to the right ventricular free wall. C-IMT was measured according to that recommended by the American society of echocardiography (ASE).
Results: The current study demonstrated that the EFT has a direct and significant correlation with the number of involved vessels (P value ˂ 0.001, r= 0.770). The validity of EFT to discriminate between multiple vessels disease and no vessel involvement is excellent (AUC= 0.984, cut point > 8mm, sensitivity=92.9%, specificity= 93.3%). There is inverse and significant correlation between ejection fraction (EF) and three vessels disease (P value ˂ 0.001, r= -0.507). Also there is a direct and significant correlation between C-IMT and severity of CAD. ROC analysis for validity of C-IMT to discriminate between multiple vessels disease and no vessel involvement is excellent (AUC= 0.961, cut point > 1.04mm, sensitivity=92.9%. specificity=86.7%). C-IMT is fair to discriminate between single vessel disease and no vessel involvement (AUC=0.738, cut point ˃ 0.84mm, sensitivity 100%), so if correlated with age, C-IMT above 0.84 can be used as a cut off point for the prediction of CAD. Finally, EFT and C-IMT are more likely to reflect severity of CAD than their ratio.
Conclusions: C-IMT and EFT are simple and reproducible parameters that can be used as a screening tool for the presence and severity of CAD especially before symptoms appearance in high risk patients
We are, today, facing a torrent of information, ideas, images and videos due to advances of communication technology and electronic publishing. In addition to the proliferation of social networking sites that allow individuals to use them and participate in their channels without any restrictions limiting their freedom in publishing. Due to these sites many terms have emerged like alternative media which use internet and its various techniques to serve its objectives notably the freedom of expression without restrictions. This research studies the phenomenon of interactive media i.e. alternative media through Facebook along with the freedom that makes it spreading in the society and the relation of individual freedom with social diversit
... Show MoreThe present investigation aims to study the effect of heat treatment by quenching in different quenching media (salt water, water and oil) following by tempering on wear resistance of EN25 steel. EN25 steel is an alloy of medium carbon low alloy steel which is used for many applications requiring high tensile strength and wear resistance such as connecting rods, adapters and in power sectors extensively. The specimens are machined to 20 mm in length and 10 mm in diameter. This study is done by two stages: The first stage is done by austenitizing EN25 steel to 850 for 1 hr by quenching the specimens in three different quenching media and then tempered at 300 in air. While the second stage is performed by wear
... Show MoreThe research aims to determine the factors affecting the woman’s use of electronic marketing in social networking sites, and to know the extent of the sample’s use of social networking sites for electronic shopping purposes. The research tool used the questionnaire form that was designed in its final form after presenting it to the arbitrators and it included a set of questions and a five-Likert scale, and used the spss statistical program to perform the statistical operations that were laid out in tables showing the frequencies, percentages and percentages Salary, mean, standard deviation, and correlation using the Spearman correlation coefficient, the Ka2 square test, the F test, the Alpha Cronbach test, and arrived at Searching to
... Show MoreThe present research was conducted to synthesis Y-Zeolite by sol-gel technique using MWCNT (multiwalled carbon nanotubes) as crystallization medium to get a narrow range of particle size distribution with small average size compared with ordinary methods. The phase pattern, chemical structure, particle size, and surface area were detected by XRD, FTIR, BET and AFM, respectively. Results shown that the average size of Zeolite with and without using MWCNT were (92.39) nm and (55.17) nm respectively .Particle size range reduced from (150-55) nm to (130-30) nm. The surface area enhanced to be (558) m2/g with slightly large pore volume (0.231) km3/g was obtained. Meanwhile, degree of crystallization decrease
... Show MoreThe present research was conducted to synthesis Y-Zeolite by sol-gel technique using MWCNT (multiwalled carbon nanotubes) as crystallization medium to get a narrow range of particle size distribution with small average size compared with ordinary methods. The phase pattern, chemical structure, particle size, and surface area were detected by XRD, FTIR, BET and AFM, respectively. Results shown that the average size of Zeolite with and without using MWCNT were (92.39) nm and (55.17) nm respectively .Particle size range reduced from (150-55) nm to (130-30) nm. The surface area enhanced to be (558) m2/g with slightly large pore volume (0.231) km3/g was obtained. Meanwhile, degree of crystallization decreased to 120%.
Association rules mining (ARM) is a fundamental and widely used data mining technique to achieve useful information about data. The traditional ARM algorithms are degrading computation efficiency by mining too many association rules which are not appropriate for a given user. Recent research in (ARM) is investigating the use of metaheuristic algorithms which are looking for only a subset of high-quality rules. In this paper, a modified discrete cuckoo search algorithm for association rules mining DCS-ARM is proposed for this purpose. The effectiveness of our algorithm is tested against a set of well-known transactional databases. Results indicate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing metaheuristic methods.