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.
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The mechanism of hydrogen (H2) gas sensor in the range of 50-200 ppm of RF-sputtered annealed zinc oxide (ZnO) and without annealing was studied. The X-ray Diffraction( XRD) results showed that the Zn metal was completely converted to ZnO with a polycrystalline structure. The I–V characteristics of the device (PT/ZnO/Pt) measured at room temperature before and after annealing at 450 oC for4h, from which a linear relationship has been observed. The sensors had a maximum response to H2 at 350 oC for annealing ZnO and showed stable behavior for detecting H2 gases in the range of 50 to 200 ppm. The annealed film exhibited hig |
Rapid and accurate identification of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus is essential in limiting the spread of this bacterium. The aim of study is the detection of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and determining their susceptibility to some antimicrobial agent. A total of fifty clinical Staphylococcus aureus, isolated from the nose of health work staff in surgery unit of Kalar general hospital and from ear of patients attended to the same hospital. The susceptibilities of isolates were determined by the disc diffusion method with oxacillin (1 ?g) and cefoxitin (30 ?g), and by the mannitol salt agar supplemented with cefoxitin (MSA-CFOX), susceptibilities of isolates to other antimicrobial agent were determined b
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This study is concerned with the estimation of constant and time-varying parameters in non-linear ordinary differential equations, which do not have analytical solutions. The estimation is done in a multi-stage method where constant and time-varying parameters are estimated in a straight sequential way from several stages. In the first stage, the model of the differential equations is converted to a regression model that includes the state variables with their derivatives and then the estimation of the state variables and their derivatives in a penalized splines method and compensating the estimations in the regression model. In the second stage, the pseudo- least squares method was used to es
... Show MoreObjective: The study aimed to identify the adolescents' fast foods and snacks, and find out the relationship between fast
food, snacks and adolescents' demographic data (gender and Body Mass Index). Methodology: A descriptive study
was conducted on impact of fast foods and snacks upon adolescents' Body Mass Index in secondary schools at Baghdad
city, starting from 20
th of April 2013 to the end of October 2014. Non- probability (purposive) sample of 1254
adolescents were chosen from secondary schools of both sides of Al-Karkh and Al-Russafa sectors. Data was collected
through a specially constructed questionnaire format include (12) items multiple choice questions. The validity of the
questionnaire was determined thr
Frustrated Total Internal Reflection FTIR phenomenon is manifested employing Newton‟s rings setup generated via a coherent light beam of a laser diode ( . All concentric bright and dark rings, except the central bright spot, were noticed to recede (disappear) when the incident angle exceeded the critical angle of 41o.
It was also shown that the current setup has proven its applicability for other tests and can give convenient results that conform with theory. Neither the concept nor the design is beyond what can be realized in an undergraduate laboratory. However, technical improvements in mounting the prism - lens may be advisable. As an extension of the experiments, the effect can be studied using hollow prism filled with liquids
This work was conducted to study the treatment of industrial waste water, and more particularly those in the General Company of Electrical Industries.This waste water, has zinc ion with maximum concentration in solution of 90 ppm.
The reuse of such effluent can be made possible via appropriate treatments, such as chemical coagulation, Na2S is used as coagulant.
The parameters that influenced the waste water treatment are: temperature, pH, dose of coagulant and settling time.
It was found that the best condition for zinc removal, within the range of operation used ,were a temperature of 20C a pH value of 13 , a coagulant dose of 15 g Na2S /400ml solution and a settling time of 7 days. Under these conditions the zinc concentrat
In this paper, some commonly used hierarchical cluster techniques have been compared. A comparison was made between the agglomerative hierarchical clustering technique and the k-means technique, which includes the k-mean technique, the variant K-means technique, and the bisecting K-means, although the hierarchical cluster technique is considered to be one of the best clustering methods. It has a limited usage due to the time complexity. The results, which are calculated based on the analysis of the characteristics of the cluster algorithms and the nature of the data, showed that the bisecting K-means technique is the best compared to the rest of the other methods used.
In this paper, a procedure to establish the different performance measures in terms of crisp value is proposed for two classes of arrivals and multiple channel queueing models, where both arrival and service rate are fuzzy numbers. The main idea is to convert the arrival rates and service rates under fuzzy queues into crisp queues by using graded mean integration approach, which can be represented as median rule number. Hence, we apply the crisp values obtained to establish the performance measure of conventional multiple queueing models. This procedure has shown its effectiveness when incorporated with many types of membership functions in solving queuing problems. Two numerical illustrations are presented to determine the validity of the
... Show MoreThis research presents a study for precipitating phosphorus (as phosphate ion) from simulated wastewater (5ppm initial concentration of phosphorus) using calcium hydroxide Ca(OH)2 solution. The removal of phosphorus by Ca (OH)2 solution is expected to be very effective since the chemical reaction is of acid-base type but Ca(OH)2 forms complex compound with phosphate ions called. Hydroxyapatite Ca5 (PO4)3OH. hydroxyapatite is slightly soluble in water. This research was directed towards sustainable elements as phosphorus. Kinetics of the dissolution reaction of hydroxyapatite was investigated to find the best factors to recover phosphorus. The effect of con
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