Background: Multiple sclerosis is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system of unknown etiology. Different techniques and magnetic resonance image sequences are widely used and compared to each other to improve the detection of multiple sclerosis lesions in the spinal cord. Objective: To evaluate the ability of MRI short tau inversion recovery sequences in improvementof multiple sclerosis spinal cord lesion detection when compared to T2 weighted image sequences. Type of the study: A retrospective study. Methods: this study conducted from 15thAugust 2013 to 30thJune 2014 at Baghdad teaching hospital. 22 clinically definite MS patients with clinical features suggestive of spinal cord involvement, patients were imaged with sagittal short tau inversion recovery sequences and sagittal T2 weighted. Results: The mean age of the patients was 32.5 ± 6.7years; female to male ratio was 2.7:1. The total number of spinal cord MS lesions was 44 of them 86.4% in the cervical spine, 68.2%of the lesions had less than one vertebra extension,79.6% of the lesions did not show changes in the spinal cord morphology. There was a significant upgrading in the lesions conspicuity at short tau inversion recovery sequence comparing to T2 weighted image, P<0.001. A significant difference had been found in artifact grading between both sequences; P<0.001. Conclusions: short tau inversion recovery magnetic resonance image sequences improve detection of MS spinal cord plaques compared with T2 weighted image and itincreasesthe conspicuity of the visualized T2weighted image lesions, but also it accentuates theartifacts more than T2weighted image.
The Dagum Regression Model, introduced to address limitations in traditional econometric models, provides enhanced flexibility for analyzing data characterized by heavy tails and asymmetry, which is common in income and wealth distributions. This paper develops and applies the Dagum model, demonstrating its advantages over other distributions such as the Log-Normal and Gamma distributions. The model's parameters are estimated using Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) and the Method of Moments (MoM). A simulation study evaluates both methods' performance across various sample sizes, showing that MoM tends to offer more robust and precise estimates, particularly in small samples. These findings provide valuable insights into the ana
... Show MoreAccording to the current situation of peroxidase (POD), the relevant studies on this enzyme indicated its importance as a tool in clinical biochemistry and different industrial fields. Most of these studies used the fruits and vegetables as source of this enzyme. So that in order to couple the growing requirements for POD with the recent demands for reduc-ing disposal volume by recycling the plant waste, the aim of the present study was to extract POD through management of municipal bio-waste of Iraqi maize species. A simple, green and economical method was used to extract this enzyme. Our results revealed that maize cobs are rich sources of POD, where the activity of this enzyme was found to be 7035.54 U/g of cobs. In pilot experiments thi
... Show MoreThis paper presents a method to classify colored textural images of skin tissues. Since medical images havehighly heterogeneity, the development of reliable skin-cancer detection process is difficult, and a mono fractaldimension is not sufficient to classify images of this nature. A multifractal-based feature vectors are suggested hereas an alternative and more effective tool. At the same time multiple color channels are used to get more descriptivefeatures.Two multifractal based set of features are suggested here. The first set measures the local roughness property, whilethe second set measure the local contrast property.A combination of all the extracted features from the three colormodels gives a highest classification accuracy with 99.4
... Show MoreGlobally, Sustainability is very quickly becoming a fundamental requirement of the construction industry as it delivers its projects; whether buildings or infrastructures. Throughout more than two decades, many modeling schemes, evaluation tools, and rating systems have been introduced en route to realizing sustainable construction. Many of these, however, lack consensus on evaluation criteria, a robust scientific model that captures the logic behind their sustainability performance evaluation, and therefore experience discrepancies between rated results and actual performance. Moreover, very few of the evaluation tools available satisfactorily address infrastructure projects. The res
In this research, the results of x-ray diffraction method were used to determine the uniform stress deformation and microstructure parameters of CuO nanoparticles to determine the lattice strain obtained and crystallite size and then to compare the results obtained by two model Halder Wagner and Size Strain Plot with the results of these methods of the same powder using equations during which the calculation of the size of the crystallite size and lattice strain, It was found that the results obtained the values of the crystallite size (19.81nm) and the lattice strain (0.004065) of the Halder-wagner model respectively and for the ssp method were the results of the crystallite size (17.20nm) and lattice strain (0.000305) respectively. The sa
... Show MoreDuring more than (50) years past, India has achieved considerable social and economic progress. It is also generally assumed that the future progress will be even more rapid and that India will be an important player in the global market. India has only (2.5) percent of global land whereas it has to provide home for one-sixth of world's population .On examining the past trends of India's population ,it may be observed that during the latter half of the twentieth century ,about (650) million populations were added to the country ,thus living in a country with a high population density and high growth rate , India in need a transition from high fertility high mortality to a low fertility low mortality and towards stable population situatio
... Show MoreOne of the most critical functions of the government is the devising and planning for the Public Budget for the coming years. Studying any budget of any given state would directly reflect on its intentions and collective direction during a certain time span. Since all allocations represent the government's agenda and time plan for coming years. And the size of each allocation would measure the priority of each budgetary item. Because of the eminent importance of the public budget planning in Iraq, a country of abundant riches and human resources that flow in the national economy, we present this research that would cover the resources versus expenditures of Iraq's public budget endured by the government to sustain its various sec
... Show MoreAbstract: The natural dye, Curcumin, was extracted from Curcuma longa using as a sensitizer in two types of dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC), and their characteristics were studied. The absorption spectrum of the dye solutions, as well as the wavelength of the maximum absorbance of the dye loaded TiO2 film has been studied. The X-Ray diffraction pattern of TiO2 film made with Doctor-Blading technique shown that the grain size of TiO2 was equal to be 40 nm. The electrical performances in terms of short circuit current, open circuit voltage and power conversion efficiency of cells were investigated.