This study aimed to compare the safety and efficacy of laser lithotripsy and pneumatic lithotripsy, the two most commonly used transurethral lithotripsy methods for treating bladder stones in children in Iraq. Between January 2013 and December 2016, 64 children with bladder stones were included in this prospective randomized study, after ethical committee approval and written consent from the children’s parents or caregivers were obtained. Patients were assigned randomly by computer software to two groups treated with either pneumatic cystolithotripsy or laser lithotripsy. A 9 Fr. semirigid ureteroscope was used to pass the lithotripter through and fragment the stone. A catheter of 8–12 Fr. was then introduced and kept in place

Background: The posterior slope of the articular eminence of completely edentulous patients compared to patients with maintained occlusion shows significant flattening. This study aimed to correlate between the flattening of the posterior slope of the articular eminence, with dental status, age, genders, on both sides using computed tomography. Materials and Methods: The sample of the present study was a total of 117 Iraqi subjects, who admitted to the maxillofacial department at Al-Sadr Teaching Hospital in Al-Najaf city. The examination was performed on CT scanner; the eminence inclination was measured in two methods using sagittal section. Results: Clinically, the inclination of articular eminence was higher in edentulous subjects than i

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a common chronic inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract, including ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease. ulcerative colitis (UC)  disease is characterized by chronic, persistent, recurrent, and nonspecific intestinal ulcers and mucosal inflammation. This study investigated the protective effects of cinnamic acid on dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) induced ulcerative colitis in mice. Forty adult male mice were collected and randomly divided into five groups, group Ӏ received a suspension of distill water and poloxamer, and group ӀӀ received 3% DSS in drinking water for 7 consecutive days. Two treatment groups received an oral suspension of cinnamic acid 50 and 25 mg/kg respectively an

In this research, hand lay- up technique is used to prepare samples from epoxy resin reinforced with multi- walled carbon nanotubes in different weight fractions (0, 2, 3, 4, 5) wt%. The immersion effect by sodium hydroxide solution (NaOH) at normality (0.3N) for a period of (15 days) on the thermal conductivity of nanocomposites was studied, and compared to natural condition (before immersion). The thermal conductivity of epoxy nanocomposites specimens were carried out using Lee’s disk method. The experimental results showed that thermal conductivity increased with increase weight fraction before and after immersion for all specimens, while the immersion effect leads to decrease thermal conductive values compared to thermal conductivi

This study has been conducted to examin the effect of sodium propionate at different level of 0.03,0.06,0.10% on the number of bacteria and mold and to extend the storage life of laboratory processed biscuit. The results indicated that the use of 0.10% sodium propionate prolonged the storage peroid until the third month, while the use of 0.20% sodium propionate showed no growth of bacteria up to six month of storage, three types of bacteria has been isolated from processed biscuit, namely, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, Esherichia coli. using 0.10% sodium propionate showed no growth of mold up to three month of storage ,while using of 0.15 % and 0.20% sodium propionate prevent the growth

With the vast usage of network services, Security became an important issue for all network types. Various techniques emerged to grant network security; among them is Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS). Many extant NIDSs actively work against various intrusions, but there are still a number of performance issues including high false alarm rates, and numerous undetected attacks. To keep up with these attacks, some of the academic researchers turned towards machine learning (ML) techniques to create software that automatically predict intrusive and abnormal traffic, another approach is to utilize ML algorithms in enhancing Traditional NIDSs which is a more feasible solution since they are widely spread. To upgrade t

The recent emergence of sophisticated Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT-4, Bard, and Bing has revolutionized the domain of scientific inquiry, particularly in the realm of large pre-trained vision-language models. This pivotal transformation is driving new frontiers in various fields, including image processing and digital media verification. In the heart of this evolution, our research focuses on the rapidly growing area of image authenticity verification, a field gaining immense relevance in the digital era. The study is specifically geared towards addressing the emerging challenge of distinguishing between authentic images and deep fakes – a task that has become critically important in a world increasingly reliant on digital med

Psoriasis, a chronic inflammatory dermatological condition, exhibits heterogeneous responses to anti-TNF therapies such as etanercept (ETN), underscoring the need for predictive biomarkers. This study investigated the association of interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β) gene promoter polymorphisms (rs1143623 C/G, rs752338864 C/G, and rs1143627 C/T) with ETN efficacy in 80 Iraqi patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. Patients were categorized according to treatment response: responders achieved ≥ 75% reduction in the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI), whereas non-responders demonstrated ≤ 50% reduction. Post-treatment serum IL-1β levels were significantly higher in non-responders (50.35 ± 15.81 pg/mL) compared to respo