Background: Quality of life in brain tumor patients is an emerging issue and has prompted neurosurgeons to recon¬sider the need for cognitive assessment in the course of treatment. To date there has been a lack of comprehensive neuropsychological assessment performed preoperatively and in the acute postoperative period in our hospitals.Objectives: to establish the effects of tumors and their surgical treatment, from a neuropsychological perspective, on cognitive functioning in patients with cerebral Gliomas. Methods: This is a prospective study conducted in the Neurosurgical Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, during the period from January 1999 to January 2001. Any patient admitted during the period of the study with clinical history, signs, symptoms, and contrast enhanced MRI suggesting a cerebral glioma and confirmed by postoperative histopathological results of glioma has been included in this study. While multifocal lesions, long-lasting epilepsy, use of antiepileptic therapy, multiple cranial lesions, previous cranial surgery, any chronic illness, and histopathological result of other tumors were exclusion criteria. All patients were at their first operation for brain tumors. Patients were examined by analyzing several functional domains (intelligence, executive functions, memory, language, praxis, gnosis and mood state) in order to establish the effect of tumor and surgery on cognition.Results: 29 patients who fulfilled the selection criteria were included. Mean duration of clinical history was 5 months (range 1–9 months). At baseline, using test- and domain-based criteria, 79% and 38% of patients, respectively, were impaired, the former related to tumor factors such as edema (P < 0.05), larger size (P < 0.05) and higher grade (P = 0.001). Verbal memory, visuospatial memory and word fluency were the most frequently affected functions, partly associated with depression. Postoperatively, 38% and 55% of patients, respectively, were unchanged, 24% and 21% improved, and 38% and 24% worsened; 24% and 62% of patients were intact, respec-tively.Conclusions: The extent of removal did not influence the outcome. Improvement involved previously impaired functions and was correlated with high-grade tumors. Worsening regar¬ded executive functions was related to tumor size and was partly explained by radiological findings on postoperative MRI. This prospective study, focusing on the effects of tumor and surgery, showed that tumor significantly affects cognitive func¬tions, mainly due to the mass effect and higher grading. Surgical treatment improved the functions most frequently affected preoperatively and caused worsening of execu¬tive functions soon after operation, leaving the overall cognitive burden unchanged and capable of improvement prospectively.
To decrease the dependency of producing high octane number gasoline on the catalytic processes in petroleum refineries and to increase the gasoline pool, the effect of adding a suggested formula of composite blending octane number enhancer to motor gasoline composed of a mixture of oxygenated materials (ethanol and ether) and aromatic materials (toluene and xylene) was investigated by design of experiments made by Mini Tab 15 statistical software. The original gasoline before addition of the octane number blending enhancer has a value of (79) research octane number (RON). The design of experiments which study the optimum volumetric percentages of the four variables, ethanol, toluene, and ether and xylene materials leads
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The main objective of this study is to characterize the main factors which may affect the behavior of segmental prestressed concrete beams comprised of multi segments. The 3-D finite element program ABAQUS was utilized. The experimental work was conducted on twelve simply supported segmental prestressed concrete beams divided into three groups depending on the precast segments number. They all had an identical total length of 3150mm, but each had different segment numbers (9, 7, and 5 segments), in other words, different segment lengths. To simulate the genuine fire disasters, nine beams were exposed to high-temperature flame for one hour, the selected temperatures were 300°C (572°F), 500°C (932°F) and 700°C (1292°F) as recomm
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This paper presents an experimental study of cooling photovoltaic (PV) panels using evaporative cooling. Underground (geothermal energy) water used to extract heat from it during cooling and cleaning of PV panels. An experimental test rig was constructed and tested under hot and dusty climate conditions in Baghdad. An active cooling system was used with auxiliary an underground water tank to provide cold water as a coolant over both PV surfaces to reduce its temperature. The cellulose pad has been arranged on the back surface and sprays cooling on the front side. Two identical PV panels modules used: without cooling and evaporative water cooling. The experiments are comprised of four cases: Case (I): backside cooling, Ca
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Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the most common gastrointestinal malignancy and one of the top ten common cancers worldwide with approximately 2 million cases. There are multiple risk factors that could lead to CRC emergence; of which are genetic polymorphisms. Excision repair cross-complementing group 2 (ERCC2) gene encodes for ERCC2 enzyme which plays a crucial role in maintaining genomic integrity by removing DNA adducts. Several studies suggested that there could be a link between genetic polymorphisms of ERCC2 gene and the risk of CRC development. Hence the present study aims to validate the relationship between the following ERCC2 single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs13181, rs149943175, rs530662943, and rs1799790) and CRC susceptibility. A t
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In this paper, a new equivalent lumped parameter model is proposed for describing the vibration of beams under the moving load effect. Also, an analytical formula for calculating such vibration for low-speed loads is presented. Furthermore, a MATLAB/Simulink model is introduced to give a simple and accurate solution that can be used to design beams subjected to any moving loads, i.e., loads of any magnitude and speed. In general, the proposed Simulink model can be used much easier than the alternative FEM software, which is usually used in designing such beams. The obtained results from the analytical formula and the proposed Simulink model were compared with those obtained from Ansys R19.0, and very good agreement has been shown. I
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Liposome-mediated transfection of cancer cells provide a valuable experimental technique to study cellular gene expression and may also be adapted for gene therapy studies. However, the widely recognized advantage of liposome-mediated transfection is high efficiency. Therefore, this study were performed to optimize transfection techniques in human larynx carcinoma cell line Hep-2 using the commercial synthetic lipid TransFast™ Reagent and monitoring the expression efficiency by using the pSV-?-galactosidase Control Vector which encoded ?-galactosidase, maximum transfection efficiency were achieved with TransFast™ Reagent used at the Charge ratios of 2:1 and 0.5 µg DNA/ml, this is indicate that TransFast™ Reagent can be used as an eff
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