Background:  Knee osteoarthritis (KOA) is a common joint disorder leading to considerable pain and locomotor disability in lower limb function. Locomotor disability, which is difficulty in activities of daily living related to lower limb function, can be the consequence of KOA, so early diagnosis and management may improve quality of life.

Objective: To assess the contribution of radiological osteoarthritis of the knees to disability in the activities of daily living related to lower limb function.

 Methods: One hundred twenty Iraqi KOA patients (104 females and 16 males) who were attending to Rheumatology Unit, Full history was taken and complete clinical exami

Thin films of pure and doped nano titanium dioxide (TiO2) were prepared using a chemical pyrolysis technique (CPS), with different nanosize graphene oxide (GO) concentrations in the range (3-9)wt%. The structural, morphological andoptical characteristics of these films were investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique measurements revealed that the structure properties of TiO2have polycrystalline structure with anatase phase. AFM analysis showed the grain size of TiO2 films with different concentrations was decreased after doping with high concentration of GO ratio. Roughness of these films decreased too after adding of GO impurity for all films from (7.65-5.6)nm except 5wt% percentage where increased to 13.7nm. Optical

Twisting and coiling actuators (TCAs) are lightweight artificial muscles that can produce large linear contractions while lifting heavy loads with low power. A TCA consists of two or more strings connected to a rotational motor and a load. When activated, the strings twist and coil, causing contraction. This study presents a data-driven framework for modeling TCA behavior using experimental data. Polynomial regression, Support Vector Regression (SVR), and symbolic regression were applied using the motor angle and payload weight as inputs. The models were evaluated under various loads and implemented in a neck-rehabilitation prototype. SVR showed the highest accuracy (RMSE: 6.17 mm upward, 4.98 mm downward); however, it lacks a closed-form e

The performance in the 110-meter hurdles at the sprint hurdles event is determined by several physical and physiological qualities. Nonetheless, relatively little attention has been paid to the predictability of such factors in determining race performance. This study seeks to fill this gap by establishing the most critical physical and physiological characteristics affecting elite hurdlers’ performance and creating a statistical model that predicts race times from the identified measurable characteristics. The study utilized a descriptive research design in-volving six elite male hurdlers, all of whom completed a battery of standardized physical and functional tests to assess their explosive lower-body strength, agility, reaction

Let R be a commutative ring with identity 1 and M be a unitary left R-module. A submodule N of an R-module M is said to be approximately pure submodule of an R-module, if for each ideal I of R. The main purpose of this paper is to study the properties of the following concepts: approximately pure essentialsubmodules, approximately pure closedsubmodules and relative approximately pure complement submodules. We prove that: when an R-module M is an approximately purely extending modules and N be Ap-puresubmodulein M, if M has the Ap-pure intersection property then N is Ap purely extending.

Human resources have been regarded as the most important asset for any organization because of its essential part in achieving the sustainable competitive advantage and survival. Managing human resources is very challenging and requires an effective bundle of practices that contribute to attaining the organizational goals. This study tries to confirm the importance of HRM practices in small businesses which came to play a vital role in the economies of the world, through clarifying the influence of HRM practices on the organizational performance, using a mediating variable (employees’ outcomes). Also the study attempts to highlight the key role of governmental support from view point of small businesses, through verifying the significant

Image steganography is undoubtedly significant in the field of secure multimedia communication. The undetectability and high payload capacity are two of the important characteristics of any form of steganography. In this paper, the level of image security is improved by combining the steganography and cryptography techniques in order to produce the secured image. The proposed method depends on using LSBs as an indicator for hiding encrypted bits in dual tree complex wavelet coefficient DT-CWT. The cover image is divided into non overlapping blocks of size (3*3). After that, a Key is produced by extracting the center pixel (pc) from each block to encrypt each character in the secret text. The cover image is converted using DT-CWT, then the p

The effect of using grinded rocks of (quartzite and porcelanite) as powder of (10 and 20) % replacement by weight of cement for self-compacting concrete slabs was investigated in this study. Five slabs with 15 concrete cubes were tested experimentally at 28 days to study the compressive strength, ultimate load, ultimate deflection, ductility, crack load and steel strain. The test results show that, the compressive strength improvement when replacement of local rock powder reached to (7.3, 4.22) % for (10 and 20) % quartzite powder and (11.3, 16.1) % for (10 and 20) % porcelanite powder, respectively compared to the reference specimen. The ultimate load percentage increase for slabs with (10 and 20) % rep

This paper deals with the F-compact operator defined on probabilistic Hilbert space and gives some of its main properties.

Entrepreneurial events are understood to be imperious in accelerating the economic development of nations owing to a large number of jobs it creates. Thus, both developed and developing countries understand the importance of entrepreneurship education to instil student interest in entrepreneurial action. This study investigates the moderating effect of entrepreneurship education (EEP) on the relationship between attitude (ATT), subjective norms (SNMS), and perceived behavioural control (PBC) towards entrepreneurship intention (EINT) of university undergraduate students. The study population covered 794 students from all the four faculties of Northwest University Kano, that were taught a compulsory entrepreneurship education course in their