Objectives: Dickkopf-1 (DKK-1) is WNT/b-catenin pathway antagonist which plays a detrimental role in the development of diabetic retinopathy (DR). This research aimed to assess serum DKK-1 levels in diabetic patients who have and have not developed DR and, compare them with the control subjects finding out whether we can use it as an indicator for DR early diagnosis and to find out which one of the widely used two groups of antidiabetic treatments had the greater effect on this biomarker and hence on the progression of DR. Methods: The study participants were divided into two subgroups: First, 70 patients (36 male, 34 female) with type 2 diabetes mellitus, among them 35 patients diagnosed with DR and 35 with no evidence of DR, and s

Abstract. Geographical and remote sensing, which gave a picture of the change in the area of agricultural land in the study area for selected years (1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020). In particular and Iraq in general, as this led to a reduction in the areas of agricultural lands and in return an increase in arid lands and their desertifica- tion and the loss of their productive value, which as a result leads to the migration of the population, the change of land sex, the failure to achieve food security and dependence on the import of the food basket.

The research aims to derive the efficient industrial plans for Al – shaheed public company under risk by using Target MOTAD as a linear alternative  model for the quadratic programming models.

The results showed that there had been a sort of (trade- off) between risk and the expected gross margins. And if the studied company strives to get high gross margin, it should tolerate risk and vice versa. So the management  of Al- Shaheed Company to be invited to apply the suitable procedures in the production process, in order to get efficient plans that improves it's  performance .

In this paper, a procedure to establish the different performance measures in terms of crisp value is proposed for two classes of arrivals and multiple channel queueing models, where both arrival and service rate are fuzzy numbers. The main idea is to convert the arrival rates and service rates under fuzzy queues into crisp queues by using graded mean integration approach, which can be represented as median rule number. Hence, we apply the crisp values obtained to establish the performance measure of conventional multiple queueing models. This procedure has shown its effectiveness when incorporated with many types of membership functions in solving queuing problems. Two numerical illustrations are presented to determine the validity of the

The aim of the research is to identify the impact of the dimensions of the European Excellence Model in evaluating the performance of the bank of the research sample, as well as to interpret which dimensions are more important to the banks of the research sample. Based on the dimensions of this model, the United Bank for Investment and Finance has chosen a research community, and has met with officials of the United Bank for Investment and Finance at various administrative levels to measure the practices of excellence management in the European model, and the analytical approach has been the case study and the construction of the checklist as a tool to collect information. The research has reached the most important results There is a discr

Reverse Osmosis (RO) has already proved its worth as an efficient treatment method in chemical and environmental engineering applications. Various successful RO attempts for the rejection of organic and highly toxic pollutants from wastewater can be found in the literature over the last decade. Dimethylphenol is classified as a high-toxic organic compound found ubiquitously in wastewater. It poses a real threat to humans and the environment even at low concentration. In this paper, a model based framework was developed for the simulation and optimisation of RO process for the removal of dimethylphenol from wastewater. We incorporated our earlier developed and validated process model into the Species Conserving Genetic Algorithm (SCG

A study on the treatment and reuse of oily wastewater generated from the process of fuel oil treatment of gas turbine power plant was performed. The feasibility of using hollow fiber ultrafiltration (UF) membrane and reverse osmosis (RO) membrane type polyamide thin-film composite in a pilot plant was investigated. Three different variables: pressure (0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 bars), oil content (10, 20, 30 and 40 ppm), and temperature (15, 20, 30 and 40 ᵒC) were employed in the UF process while TDS was kept constant at 150 ppm. Four different variables: pressure (5, 6, 7 and 8 bar), oil content (2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10 ppm), total dissolved solids (TDS) (100, 200,300 and 400 ppm), and temperature (15, 20, 30 and 40 ᵒC) were mani

The purpose of this study is to investigate the biostimulation effect of 532 nm CW laser on the metabolism of Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast. Cells were irradiated by 532 nm Nd:YAG laser using 0.153 W/cm2 power density at 30, 45, 60,180 and 300 seconds exposure times in their respective orders. Intrafluorescence parameters were measured by detection the autofluorescence intensity, proliferation rate and Imaging the fluorescent mitochondria using confocal laser scanning microscope. The results showed that the 30 and 45 second exposure times seem to have stimulated changes in the cells that led to increase proliferation, viability and mitochondrial activity. Autofluorescence of cells increased after 45 and 60 seconds exposure time. After 3

The most significant water supply, which is the basis of agriculture, industry and human and wildlife needs, is the river. In order to determine its suitability for drinking purposes, this study aims to measure the Water Quality Index (WQI) of the Tigris River in the Salah Al-Din Province (center of Tikrit), north of Baghdad. For ten (9) physio-chemical parameters, namely turbidity, total suspended sediments, PH, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, alkalinity, chloride, nitrogen as nitrate, sulphate, and then transported for examination to the laboratory, water samples were collected from 13 locations along the Tigris river. Using the weighted arithmetic index method, the WQI was measured and found to be 105,87 in up-stream, wh