Background: Pemphigus vulgaris (PV) is an autoimmune vesiculobullous mucocutaneous disease with life-threatening consequences. Rituximab (RTX) has recently emerged as an effective treatment for PV. Objectives: This study aims to determine changes in neutrophil and platelet counts for PV patients treated with RTX or corticosteroids combined with Imuran (azathioprine). Materials and Methods: The present cross-sectional study was conducted in the Department of Dermatology at Baghdad Teaching Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq. Thirty PV patients received two types of treatment: 15 patients were administered RTX and 15 patients took corticosteroids with Imuran (azathioprine). Neutrophil and platelet counts were detected at the hospital laboratory. Results

This research discussed, the process of comparison between the regression model of partial least squares and tree regression, where these models included two types of statistical methods represented by the first type "parameter statistics" of the partial least squares, which is adopted when the number of variables is greater than the number of observations and also when the number of observations larger than the number of variables, the second type is the "nonparametric statistic" represented by tree regression, which is the division of data in a hierarchical way. The regression models for the two models were estimated, and then the comparison between them, where the comparison between these methods was according to a Mean Square

Low salinity (LS) water flooding is a promising EOR method which has been examined by many experimental studies and field pilots for a variety of reservoirs and oils. This paper investigates applying LS flooding to a heavy oil. Increasing the LS water temperature improves heavy oil recovery by achieving higher sweep efficiency and improving oil mobility by lowering its viscosity. Steam flooding projects have reported many problems such as steam gravity override, but override can be lessened if the steam is is alternated with hot LS water. In this study, a series of reservoir sandstone cores were obtained from Bartlesville Sandstone (in Eastern Kansas) and aged with heavy crude oil (from the same reservoir) at 95°C for 45 days. Five reservo

This work presents a design for a pressure swing adsorption process (PSA) to separate oxygen from air with approximately 95% purity, suitable for different numbers of columns and arrangements. The product refill PSA process was found to perform 33% better (weight of zeolite required or productivity) than the pressure equalization process. The design is based on the adsorption equilibrium of a binary mixture of O₂ and N₂ for two of the most commonly used adsorbents, 5A & 13X, and extension from a single column approach. Zeolite 13X was found to perform 6% better than zeolite 5A. The most effective variables were determined to be the adsorption step time and the operational pressure. Increasing the adsorption step

Rutting has a significant impact on the pavements' performance. Rutting depth is often used as a parameter to assess the quality of pavements. The Asphalt Institute (AI) design method prescribes a maximum allowable rutting depth of 13mm, whereas the AASHTO design method stipulates a critical serviceability index of 2.5 which is equivalent to an average rutting depth of 15mm. In this research, static and repeated compression tests were performed to evaluate the permanent strain based on (1) the relationship between mix properties (asphalt content and type), and (2) testing temperature. The results indicated that the accumulated plastic strain was higher during the repeated load test than that during the static load tests. Notably, temperatur

The result revealed that the peak of population density of cabbage aphid Brevicoryne brassicae was 523.20 individuals/plant on 21 March in edges of rapeseed field and was 1141.67 individuals/plant in center of the field. Results revealed that population density of cabbage aphid in rapeseed fields surrounded by cover crops significantly were low compared with that of monoculture rapeseed. The location of rapeseed plants (in edges or in center) significantly affected (p<0.05) the tested pest density, e.g. optimum density was 146.69 individuals/plant in the center of the field. Whereas was 93.32 in the edges. Effect of the interaction between location and surrounding vegetation was significant on aphid density, which their population densit

This paper is concerned with pre-test single and double stage shrunken estimators for the mean (?) of normal distribution when a prior estimate (?0) of the actule value (?) is available, using specifying shrinkage weight factors ?(?) as well as pre-test region (R). Expressions for the Bias [B(?)], mean squared error [MSE(?)], Efficiency [EFF(?)] and Expected sample size [E(n/?)] of proposed estimators are derived. Numerical results and conclusions are drawn about selection different constants included in these expressions. Comparisons between suggested estimators, with respect to classical estimators in the sense of Bias and Relative Efficiency, are given. Furthermore, comparisons with the earlier existing works are drawn.

Mortar of ordinary Portland cement was blended with cockles shell
powder at different weight ratios to investigate the effect of powder
admixture on their strength and thermal conductivity. Results showed
that addition of cockles shell powder at 50% of mortar weight
improves hardness and compressive strength notably and reduces the
thermal conductivity of the end product. Results suggest the
possibility to incorporate cockles shell powders as constituents in
cement mortars for construction and plastering applications.

       In terms of the core nucleus plus valence nucleon, shell-model calculations using two model spaces and interactions, the relationship between a nucleus' proton skin, and the difference in proton radii of mirror pairs of nuclei with the same mass number are investigated. In this work, two pairs of mirror nuclei will be studied: 17Ne-17N and 23Al-23Ne. For 17Ne-17N nuclei, p-shell and mixing of psd orbits are adopted with Cohen-Kurath (ckii) and psdsu3 interactions. While for 23Al-23Ne, the sd-shell and sdpf shell are adopted with the universal shell model (USD) and sdpfwa interactions. Also, the ground state density distributions, elastic form factors, and root mean square radii of these pairs' nuclei are studied and com