Objective: To identify barriers to healthcare access, to assess the health literacy levels of the foreign-born Arabic speaking population in Iowa, USA and to measure their prevalence of seeking preventive healthcare services. Methods: A cross-sectional study of native Arabic speaking adults involved a focus group and an anonymous paper-based survey. The focus group and the Andersen Model were used to develop the survey questionnaire. The survey participants were customers at Arabic grocery stores, worshippers at the city mosque and patients at free University Clinic. Chi-square test was used to measure the relationship between the characteristics of survey participants and preventive healthcare services. Thematic analysis was

     Community detection is an important and interesting topic for better understanding and analyzing complex network structures. Detecting hidden partitions in complex networks is proven to be an NP-hard problem that may not be accurately resolved using traditional methods. So it is solved using evolutionary computation methods and modeled in the literature as an optimization problem.  In recent years, many researchers have directed their research efforts toward addressing the problem of community structure detection by developing different algorithms and making use of single-objective optimization methods. In this study, we have continued that research line by improving the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm using a

Background: Aesthetic archwires are used to overcome the aesthetic problems of stainless steel wires but the color of the coating layer can be changed with time when exposed to oral environments. The aim of this study was to evaluate the degree of color change of different aesthetic archwires from different companies under different coloring solutions. Materials and Methods: One hundred fifty samples of coated archwires from three companies (Highland, G&H and Dany) were immersed in 5 solutions (artificial saliva, turmeric, tea, coffee and Miranda) to evaluate the degree of color changes after 7, 14 and 21 days using visible spectrophotometer. Data were collected and analyzed using one way ANOVA and post hoc Tukey’s tests. Resu

Polycystic ovary syndrome(PCOS) is a heterogeneous disorder of uncertain etiology , it is the most common endocrinopathy in women and most common cause of anovulatery infertility ,characterized by chronic anovulation and hyperandrogenemia .The present study was designed to investigate the effect of silymarin which is known to have antioxidant and insulin sensitivity effects on the  levels of glucose, insulin ,testosterone ,leutinizing hormone(LH) and progesterone .Ovulation rate and Homeostasis Model Assessment of insulin Resistance (HOMA) ratio were determined .A 3-months of treatment were conducted in 60 PCOS patients in three well-matched groups .The first one (n=20),received silymarin(750mg/day)  .The second group received

     Community detection is an important and interesting topic for better understanding and analyzing complex network structures. Detecting hidden partitions in complex networks is proven to be an NP-hard problem that may not be accurately resolved using traditional methods. So it is solved using evolutionary computation methods and modeled in the literature as an optimization problem.  In recent years, many researchers have directed their research efforts toward addressing the problem of community structure detection by developing different algorithms and making use of single-objective optimization methods. In this study, we have continued that research line by improving the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm using a local

The application of physiological oxygen (physoxia) concentrations is becoming increasingly commonplace within a mammalian stem cell culture. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) attract widespread interest for clinical application due to their unique immunomodulatory, multi-lineage potential, and regenerative capacities. Descriptions of the impact of physoxia on global DNA methylation patterns in hMSCs and the activity of enzymatic machinery responsible for its regulation remain limited. Human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-hMSCs, passage 1) isolated in reduced oxygen conditions displayed an upregulation of SOX2 in reduced oxygen conditions vs. air oxygen (21% O2, AO), while no change was noted for either OCT-4 or NA

In this paper, we introduce a DCT based steganographic method for gray scale images. The embedding approach is designed to reach efficient tradeoff among the three conflicting goals; maximizing the amount of hidden message, minimizing distortion between the cover image and stego-image,and maximizing the robustness of embedding. The main idea of the method is to create a safe embedding area in the middle and high frequency region of the DCT domain using a magnitude modulation technique. The magnitude modulation is applied using uniform quantization with magnitude Adder/Subtractor modules. The conducted test results indicated that the proposed method satisfy high capacity, high preservation of perceptual and statistical properties of the steg

This research included the study of different factors that may effect on gatifloxacin stability (anew quinolone synthetic antibacterial agent) in its aqueous solution in order to develop and optimize the best delivary of the drug to the eye (as eye drop) with maximum local concentration and minimum systemic absorption and toxicity.Different formulas of gatifloxacin solution for ophthalmic use (0.3%)w/v were prepared in citrate, acetate,citrate/phosphate and phosphate buffers,their tonicity adjusted with suitable quantity of sodium chloride.The effect of different factors that might affectthe stability of gatifloxacin in its prepared ophthalmic solution was studied and determined spectrophotometrically at 287 nm. The results showed t

A common field development task is the object of the present research by specifying the best location of new horizontal re-entry wells within AB unit of South Rumaila Oil Field. One of the key parameters in the success of a new well is the well location in the reservoir, especially when there are several wells are planned to be drilled from the existing wells. This paper demonstrates an application of neural network with reservoir simulation technique as decision tool. A fully trained predictive artificial feed forward neural network (FFNNW) with efficient selection of horizontal re-entry wells location in AB unit has been carried out with maintaining a reasonable accuracy. Sets of available input data were collected from the exploited g

In this research, we have measured specific activity concentrations in five samples for raw materials used in ceramic industry in AL-Ramadi ceramic factory by using (HPGe) detector. The results have shown that, the average specific activity, for ²³⁸U, ²³²Th and ⁴⁰K are equal to (18.300±6.4 Bq/kg), (17.988±6.1 Bq/kg), (167.952±63.5 Bq/kg), respectively.  In order to assess the radiological hazards of the radioactivity in samples, radium equivalent activity, absorbed gamma dose rate, indoor and outdoor annual effective dose rates, gamma Index and both (external and internal) hazard effects have been calculated. All results were found to be less than the allowed global limit given by (UNSCEAR, 2000).