A case–control study (80 patients with chronic hepatitis B virus [HBV] infection and 96 controls) was performed to evaluate the association of an IL12A gene variant (rs582537 A/C/G) with HBV infection. Allele G showed a signifcantly lower frequency in patients compared to controls (31.2 vs. 46.9%; probability [p]=0.009; corrected p [pc]=0.027) and was associated with a lower risk of HBV infection (odds ratio [OR]=0.49; 95% confdence interval [CI]=0.29–0.83). A similar lower risk was associated with genotypes CG (17.5 vs. 29.2; OR=0.25; 95% CI=0.08–0.81; p=0.02) and GG (10.0 vs. 16.7; OR=0.25; 95% CI=0.07–0.91; p=0.036), but the pc value was not signifcant (0.12 and 0.126, respec‑ tively). Serum IL35 levels showed signifcant difere

Background: With the increased in the demands of adult orthodontics, the challenge of direct bonding to non-enamel surface (zirconium) had been increased. The present study was carried out to compare the shear bond strength of three different brackets (stainless steel, sapphire and composite) bonded to zirconium surface and study the mode of bond failure. Materials and methods: The sample was comprised of 30 models (8mm *6mm*1.5mm) of full contour zirconium veneers. They were divided into three groups according to the brackets type; all samples were treated first by sandblast with aluminum oxide particle 50 µm then coated by z-prime plus primer. A central incisor bracket of each group was bonded to the prepared zirconium surface with lig

<p class="0abstract">Image denoising is a technique for removing unwanted signals called the noise, which coupling with the original signal when transmitting them; to remove the noise from the original signal, many denoising methods are used. In this paper, the Multiwavelet Transform (MWT) is used to denoise the corrupted image by Choosing the HH coefficient for processing based on two different filters Tri-State Median filter and Switching Median filter. With each filter, various rules are used, such as Normal Shrink, Sure Shrink, Visu Shrink, and Bivariate Shrink. The proposed algorithm is applied Salt&amp; pepper noise with different levels for grayscale test images. The quality of the denoised image is evaluated by usi

In this work, results from an optical technique (laser speckle technique) for measuring surface roughness was done by using statistical properties of speckle pattern from the point of view of computer image texture analysis. Four calibration relationships were used to cover wide range of measurement with the same laser speckle technique. The first one is based on intensity contrast of the speckle, the second is based on analysis of speckle binary image,  the third is on size of speckle pattern spot, and the latest one is based on characterization of the energy feature of the gray level co-occurrence matrices for the speckle pattern. By these calibration relationships surface roughness of an object surface can be evaluated within the

This paper presents the electrical behavior of the top contact/ bottom gate of an organic field-effect transistor (OFET) utilizing Pentacene as a semiconductor layer with two distinctive gate dielectric materials Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and Zirconium oxide (ZrO2) were chosen. The influence of the monolayer and bilayer gates insulator on OFET performance was investigated. MATLAB software was used to simulate and determine the electrical characteristics of a device. The output and transfer characteristics were studied for ZrO2, PVP and ZrO2/PVP as an organic gate insulator layer. Both characteristics show a high drain current at the gate dielectric ZrO2/PVP equal to -0.0031A and -0.0015A for output and transfer characteristics respectively

We used to think of grammar as the bones of the language and vocabulary as the flesh to be added given that language consisted largely of life generated chunks of lexis. This “skeleton image” has been proverbially used to refer to that central feature of lexis named collocation- an idea that for the first 15 years of language study and analysis gave a moment‟s thought to English classroom material and methodology.
The work of John Sinclair, Dave Willis, Ron Carter, Michael McCarthy, Michael Lewis, and many others have all contributed to the way teachers today approach the area of lexis and what it means in the teaching/learning process of the language. This also seems to have incorporated lexical ideas into the teaching mechanis

Making the data secure is more and more concerned in the communication era. This research is an attempt to make a more secured information message by using both encryption and steganography. The encryption phase is done with dynamic DNA complementary rules while DNA addition rules are done with secret key where both are based on the canny edge detection point of the cover image. The hiding phase is done after dividing the cover image into 8 blocks, the blocks that are used for hiding selected in reverse order exception the edge points. The experiments result shows that the method is reliable with high value in PSNR