Background: The excess mortality associated with
rheumatoid arthritis is largely due to
cardiovascular disease. Rheumatoid arthritis is of
primary importance in atherogenesis. The intimamedia thickness of extracranial carotid arteries is a
measurable index of the presence of
atherosclerosis.
Objective: To assess carotid intima-media
thickness in rheumatoid arthritis by Doppler
ultrasound.
Methods: Fifty two Iraqi patients with rheumatoid
arthritis were studied and compared with another
fifty two, healthy individuals matched for age and
sex as a control group. Full history was taken and
complete clinical examination was done for all
individuals in both groups. Rheumatoid arthritis
diagnosis was

Efficient and cost-effective drilling of directional wells necessitates the implementation of best drilling practices and advanced techniques to optimize drilling operations. Failure to adequately consider drilling risks can result in inefficient drilling operations and non-productive time (NPT). Although advanced drilling techniques may be expensive, they offer promising technical solutions for mitigating drilling risks. This paper aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of advanced drilling techniques in mitigating risks and improving drilling operations when compared to conventional drilling techniques. Specifically, the advanced drilling techniques employed in Buzurgan Oil Field, including vertical drilling with mud motor, managed pres

_{Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is. Reading comprehension is much more than decoding; it results when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type oftext, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose.Reading comprehension is important because without it reading is nothing more than tracking symbols on a page with your eyes and sounding them out leaving the reader with no information. Instead of promoting traditional approaches, reading should be ta}

The aim of this paper is to construct cyclic subgroups of the projective general linear group over  from the companion matrix, and then form caps of various degrees in . Geometric properties of these caps as secant distributions and index distributions are given and determined if they are complete. Also, partitioned of  into disjoint lines is discussed.

Automatic speaker recognition may achieve remarkable performance in matched training and test conditions. Conversely, results drop significantly in incompatible noisy conditions. Furthermore, feature extraction significantly affects performance. Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients MFCCs are most commonly used in this field of study. The literature has reported that the conditions for training and testing are highly correlated. Taken together, these facts support strong recommendations for using MFCC features in similar environmental conditions (train/test) for speaker recognition. However, with noise and reverberation present, MFCC performance is not reliable. To address this, we propose a new feature 'entrocy' for accurate and robu

An analytical method and a two-dimensional finite element model for treating the problem of laser heating and melting has been applied to aluminum 2519T87and stainless steel 304. The time needed to melt and vaporize and the effects of laser power density on the melt depth for two metals are also obtained. In addition, the depth profile and time evolution of the temperature before melting and after melting are given, in which a discontinuity in the temperature gradient is obviously observed due to the latent heat of fusion and the increment in thermal conductivity in solid phase. The analytical results that induced by  laser irradiation is in good agreement with numerical results.

This paper aims to investigate the flexural behavior of reinforced concrete beams considering fire resistance by adding Lightweight Expanded Clay Aggregates (LECA) to the concrete mix as partial coarse aggregate replacement. LECA is a type of porous clay with a uniform pore structure with fine, closed cells and hard, tightly sintered skin. The experimental work comprised four reinforced self-compacted concrete beams. All the specimens were identical in their geometrical layout of 1600×240×200 mm, reinforcement details, and support condition (simply supported). For all the beams, the main reinforcement was provided by two bars, each having a diameter of 12 mm, while a bar of 6 mm diameter was employed for the top and shear reinforc

Tin dioxide doped silver oxide thin films with different x content (0, 0.03, 0.05, 0.07) have been prepared by pulse laser deposition technique (PLD) at room temperatures (RT). The effect of doping concentration on the structural and electrical properties of the films were studied. Atomic Force Measurement (AFM) measurements found that the average value of grain size for all films at RT decrease with increasing of AgO content. While an average roughness values increase with increasing x content. The electrical properties of these films were studied with different x content. The D.C conductivity for all films increases with increasing x content. Also, it found that activation energies decrease with increasing of AgO content for all films.

Islamic banks are distinguished by providing banking activities that are unique in providing them from the rest of the other types of banks, and these activities are a group of banking services provided by the bank to its customers, whether these banking activities are tangible or intangible. At the same time, it is a source of bank profits, as Islamic banks impose a percentage of Islamic Murabaha on those banking activities , However, these banks have developed new services that they provide with the funds of the Central Bank initiative launched at the beginning of (2016) due to the economic conditions that befell the country due to the (financial security) crisis that the country faced in 2014. To put forward initiatives, and a

In the present study, the growth and total lipid contents of two oleaginous fungal isolates Aspergillus terreus, Aspergillus fumigatus were compared in different nitrogen and organic carbon sources.  Artificially the fungi were cultured on media consisting of various mono- or di- or polysaccharides and  peptone or yeast extract as elementary sources for carbon and nitrogen, respectively. Media containing sucrose /yeast extract or glucose/ yeast extract were the most effective for lipid production from fungal, during  two weeks  incubation period, the highest biomass of dry weight was (19.6 , 18.8) g / L , (25.8 , 30.5) g /L  and  lipid yield (1, 0.97 )g/L, (0.65, 0.65) g/ L for two isolates Aspergillus terreus