Background: Axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) is an inflammatory, systemic rheumatic condition that mostly affects the axial skeleton. Tenascin-C (TN-C) is a hexameric glycoprotein of considerable size, upregulated in many inflammatory conditions, while Interleukin-17 (IL-17) a cytokine that plays an important role in SpA symptoms. Objective: to investigate the upregulation between the serum levels of TN-C and IL-17 in Iraqi axSpA patients and the disease characteristics. Patients and Methods: Seventy-four axSpA patients and 28 matched controls were studied. Fifty-four patients received a tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) and 20 did not. Serum TN-C and IL-17 concentrations were determined using the ELISA technique. The Bath Ankyl

The impact of undergraduate research experiences on students' academic development and retention in STEM fields is significant. Students' success in STEM fields is based on developing strong research and critical thinking skills that make it essential for students to engage in research activities throughout their academic programs. This work evaluates the effectiveness of undergraduate research experiences with respect to its influence on student retention and academic development. The cases presented are based on years of experience implementing undergraduate research programs in various STEM fields at Colorado State University Pueblo (CSU Pueblo) funded by HSI STEM Grants. The study seeks to establish a correlation between students' reten

This study included the Zakhikhah area in the Al- Anbar desert, which it bounded on the north, east, and west by the Euphrates River and on the south by the Ramadi-Qaim road. Several exploratory field trips were taken to the study area. During this time, a semi-detailed area survey was carried out based on satellite imagery captured by American Land sat-7, topographic maps, and natural vegetation variance. All necessary field tools, including a digital camera and GPS device, were brought to determine the soil type and collect plant samples. All of these visits are planned to cover the entire state of Zakhikhah. All vegetation cover observations, identifying sampling sites and attempting to inventory and collect medicinal plants in t

In this paper, an algorithm for binary codebook design has been used in vector quantization technique, which is used to improve the acceptability of the absolute moment block truncation coding (AMBTC) method. Vector quantization (VQ) method is used to compress the bitmap (the output proposed from the first method (AMBTC)). In this paper, the binary codebook can be engender for many images depending on randomly chosen to the code vectors from a set of binary images vectors, and this codebook is then used to compress all bitmaps of these images. The chosen of the bitmap of image in order to compress it by using this codebook based on the criterion of the average bitmap replacement error (ABPRE). This paper is suitable to reduce bit rates

HBV and HCV are the major causes of chronic liver diseases throughout the world, and constitute a major global health risk. There is accumulated evidence that the imbalance of proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokine production may play an important role in the pathogenesis of viral hepatic infections and may influence the clinical outcome and disease progression. This study was undertaken to analyze the circulating levels of Tumor Necrotic Factor (TNF-α) and Th2 cytokine IL-10 in patients infected with Hepatitis B and C virus. The study population consisted of 30 patients with chronic HBV, in addition to other 30 patients with chronic HCV infection were recruited on their first examination at the Al-Kindy General Hospital in Baghdad

Recently, wireless charging based RF harvesting has interfered our lives [1] significantly through the different applications including biomedical, military, IoT, RF energy harvesting, IT-care, and RFID technologies. Wirelessly powered low energy devices become significantly essential for a wide spectrum of sensing applications [1]. Such devices require for low energy resources from sunlight, mechanical vibration, thermal gradients, convection flows or other forms of harvestable energy [2]. One of the emerging power extraction resources based on passive devices is harvesting radio frequency (RF) signals powers [3]–[5]. Such applications need devices that can be organized in very large numbers, so, making separate node battery impractical.