Background: Neural tube defects (NTDs) are said to be inherited in a multifactorial fashion, i.e. genetic-environmental interaction. Maternal nutritional deficiencies had long been reported to cause NTDs, especially folate deficiency during early pregnancy. More attention had been paid to the exact mechanism by which this deficiency state causes these defects in the developing embryo. The most significant of all researches was that connecting reduced folate and increased homocysteine level in maternal serum on one hand and the risk of developing a NTD baby on the other hand. Objectives : to determine the significance of homocysteine level in Iraqi mothers who gave birth to babies with NTDs as compared to normal controls. Patients, Materials and Methods: Fifty Iraqi women having babies born with NTDS, referred to the genetic clinic in Baghdad Teaching Hospital, were included in this study (the study group) as well as 37 healthy women having normal children (the control group). This study was conducted from November, 2002 till October, 2003. Analysis of total serum homocysteine level for all women was done using a computerized HPLC system. Results : the age of women in both groups was comparable (mean+SD in the study group was 26.2+5.14 years vs. 26.3+4.57 years in the controls). Among the study group, 4 (8%) had normal tHcy level; 44 (88%) had mildly elevated level, and only 2 (4%) had moderately elevated tHcy level, while all (100%) women in the control group had their tHcy level within normal level. This difference was statistically highly significant (p<0.001). Conclusions : Women become at an increased risk of delivering a baby with NTD when having an elevated tHcy level in their sera, and that tHcy level is an important marker in maternal serum that is associated significantly with pregnancy outcome.
Research on the automated extraction of essential data from an electrocardiography (ECG) recording has been a significant topic for a long time. The main focus of digital processing processes is to measure fiducial points that determine the beginning and end of the P, QRS, and T waves based on their waveform properties. The presence of unavoidable noise during ECG data collection and inherent physiological differences among individuals make it challenging to accurately identify these reference points, resulting in suboptimal performance. This is done through several primary stages that rely on the idea of preliminary processing of the ECG electrical signal through a set of steps (preparing raw data and converting them into files tha
... Show MoreThe education, especially higher education, is an essentially factor in the progress of any society, if we consider the higher education, represents the top of the education`s pyramid which take part in developing the human resources and provide the human staff to raise the productive efficiency, and improve the social , economic level
In order to face the increasing importance of higher education, great capabilities and expenditures must be available in a continous way, such expe
... Show MoreThe speech recognition system has been widely used by many researchers using different
methods to fulfill a fast and accurate system. Speech signal recognition is a typical
classification problem, which generally includes two main parts: feature extraction and
classification. In this paper, a new approach to achieve speech recognition task is proposed by
using transformation techniques for feature extraction methods; namely, slantlet transform
(SLT), discrete wavelet transforms (DWT) type Daubechies Db1 and Db4. Furthermore, a
modified artificial neural network (ANN) with dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm is
developed to train a speech recognition system to be used for classification and recognition
purposes. T
In this paper, we derive and prove the stability bounds of the momentum coefficient µ and the learning rate ? of the back propagation updating rule in Artificial Neural Networks .The theoretical upper bound of learning rate ? is derived and its practical approximation is obtained
Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) is one of the important statistical methods that are widely used in a range of applications in various fields, which simulates the work of the human brain in terms of receiving a signal, processing data in a human cell and sending to the next cell. It is a system consisting of a number of modules (layers) linked together (input, hidden, output). A comparison was made between three types of neural networks (Feed Forward Neural Network (FFNN), Back propagation network (BPL), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). he study found that the lowest false prediction rate was for the recurrentt network architecture and using the Data on graduate students at the College of Administration and Economics, Univer
... Show MoreIn this paper we present a method to analyze five types with fifteen wavelet families for eighteen different EMG signals. A comparison study is also given to show performance of various families after modifying the results with back propagation Neural Network. This is actually will help the researchers with the first step of EMG analysis. Huge sets of results (more than 100 sets) are proposed and then classified to be discussed and reach the final.
Image Fusion Using A Convolutional Neural Network