Search

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is defined as a group of pervasive neurodevelopmental disorders that include significantly impaired functioning in terms of cognitive skills and socialization, verbal and receptive communication, and repetitive behaviors. Several problems arise when handling children with ASD which of them is related to eating behavior. The challenges in daily life that need to be faced by parents of ASD children during mealtime are increased food selectivity, food refusal, and problematic mealtime behaviors. A cross-sectional study was carried out to identify prevalence of child’s behavioural feeding problems, body mass index and mental health issue experience by both parents and children with ASD in Malaysia. A total of 213 parents participated in this study. Data on sociodemographic, eating behavior were collected using a questionnaire. Respondents completed the self-reported Sociodemographic form, anthropometry form and Behavioral Paediatric Feeding Assessment Scale (BPFAS) questionnaire, Strength and Difficulty questionnaire and answer 10-item perceived stress scale to evaluate the intended measures. The prevalence abnormal of eating behavior is higher among the participants was 80.8% (n=172). For BMI, 49.8% (n=106) of the respondents reported the highest prevalence of overweight. Peer and pro-social problems were the most frequently reported mental health issues among ASD children, but emotional, behaviour, and hyperactivity issues were reported less frequently. The majority of parents surveyed in this study assessed themselves to be under considerable stress (93.4 percent). In conclusion, this cross-sectional study demonstrated a high frequency of behavioural feeding difficulties, mental health concerns, and obesity among children with autism spectrum disorders in Malaysia. The findings from this study will contribute to the body of information regarding the nutritional health of children with autism spectrum disorders. The increased prevalence of overweight and obesity in children with ASD is one of the indicators that this study should investigate additional factors that may influence children's weight status.

Background: As our society ages, the incidence of chronic diseases increases, and so does drug use and polypharmacy. Aim: To evaluate the medication use behaviors of selected elderly patients who lived in Baghdad city. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 225 subjects aged >60 years who lived in Baghdad city and consumed chronically prescribed medications. Data were collected using a survey form, and the survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews. The data are presented as numbers, percentages, and averages. Results: The majority were treated through polypharmacy, using various drugs. The most commonly used drugs included those used to treat cardiovascular diseases, DM, and dyslipidemia. 74.6% did not know about the side effects of the drugs they used, and 55.6% did not read the product information leaflet (PIL) of the drugs. Also, 70.7% said that the health care personnel did not educate them about their drugs. Of the elderly who were informed about their drugs, 128 obtained the information from the physician and 91 from the pharmacist. Conclusion: The majority of the elderly subjects used more than one drug, and the main drug class used was the cardiovascular agents. they are unaware of the side effects of the prescribed agents.

Multiple mutations in the quinolone-determining resistant regions of topoisomerase enzymes are usually associated with high levels of fluoroquinolone resistance in E. coli. Gyr A gene encodes (gyrase II) enzyme that changes topology by introducing transient double-stranded breaks into DNA and passing a second double-stranded DNA segment through the break before resealing it. The current investigation aims to reveal the correlation between functional gyrase enzyme and non-functional gyrase with level MIC of quinolone resistance under study. Patients with various illnesses such as urinary tract infections (UTIs), gastro enteritis (diarrhea) and wound infections were involved in the investigation. A total of 200 clinical samples were obtained. There are 30 samples diagnostic as E. coli clinical strain after identification by biochemical test, VITEK-2 compact system, and by molecular method using 16SrDNA marker. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing and minimal inhibition concentration (MIC) for Nalidixic acid, Norfloxacin, ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, and Gatifloxacin was performed by broth microdilution method. According to manufacturing company (Topogen-USA); cell lysate are produced;then Bacterial gyrase assay (Topogen-USA) has been used to show the activity of gyrase enzyme by observation of negative supercoiling of E. coli DNA. Gyr A gene is detectable in all tested E. coli (100%); but There are only 16/30 isolates have active topoisomerase type2 with percentage 53.33% only; while; (14) isolates with non-functional gyrase enzyme since they not produce negative supercoiling DNA bands after gel electrophoreses with ethidium bromide stain. non-functional gyrase enzyme are associated with high E. coli resistance level against quinolone antimicrobial under study. MIC value for two groups are show significantly different concerning Nalidixic acid, Norfloxacin, while no significant difference concerning Levofloxacin and Gatifloxacin antibiotics.As a result, this research representsto be an effective method for determining the primary target of a quinolone drug in E. coli clinical isolates, and for the purification and characterization of DNA Gyrase so. E. coli are highly isolated from vagina samples 40% and then from urine samples (32%) followed by (24%) from wounds infections and (21%) from stool .There are correlation between the reduced sensitivity of quinolone under study and bacterial topoisomerases activity in E. coli isolates.

The main objective of the research is to find out how monetary policy has influenced the support and promotion of bank credit to promote the economy by creating jobs and addressing unemployment, where the central bank after2003 played a leading and active role in supporting commercial banks and promoting bank credit ‘One of the central bank's important objectives is to stabilize the overall level of prices set out in law No 56 For the year ( ( 2004 Article (3) The Central Bank of Iraq has used the policy of stability in the exchange rate of the dinar as a key tool in stabilizing prices in Iraq through the window of selling foreign currency.

Background: Ward rounds are a cornerstone in the educational experience of junior doctors and essential part for teaching patient care. Here, we aimed to assess the doctors’ perception about ward rounds as an educational opportunity and to determine the obstacles to conduct a proper ward round in Sudanese hospitals. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted from the 15th to the 30th of January 2022, among house officers, medical officers, and registrars in about 50 teaching and referral hospitals in Sudan. House officers and medical officers were considered the learners, while specialist registrars were considered the teachers. Doctors' perception was assessed using an online questionnaire, with a 5-Likert scale answering questions. Results: A total of 2,011 doctors participated in this study (882 house officers, 697 medical officers, and 432 registrars). The participants aged 26.9 ± 3.2 years, and females constituted about 60% of the sample. An average of 3.1 ± 6.8 ward rounds were conducted per week in our hospitals, with 11.1 ± 20.3 hours spent on ward rounds per week. A large majority of the doctors agreed that ward rounds are suitable for teaching patient management (91.3%) and diagnostic investigations (89.1%). Almost all the doctors agreed that being interested in teaching (95.1%) and communicating appropriately with the patients (94.7%) make a good teacher on ward rounds. Furthermore, nearly all the doctors agreed that being interested in learning (94.3%) and communicating appropriately with the teacher (94.5%) make a good student on ward rounds. About 92.8% of the doctors stated that ward rounds' quality could be improved. The most frequently reported obstacles that were faced during ward rounds were the noise (70%) and lack of privacy (77%) in the ward environment. Conclusion: Ward rounds have a special value on teaching patient diagnosis and management. Being interested in teaching/learning and having good communication skills were the two major criteria that make a good teacher/learner. Unfortunately, ward rounds are faced by obstacles related to the ward environment. It is mandatory to ensure the quality of both ward rounds' teaching and environment in order to optimise the educational value and subsequently improve patient care practice.

In many developed countries, photovoltaic solar power, which is considered the most cost-effective renewable energy source, accounts for a major portion of electricity production. The photovoltaic (PV) power generation are unpredictable and imprecise due to its high variation that can be caused of meteorological elements, to reduce the negative influence of the use of PV power, accurate PV power prediction is of crucial significance for the for the secure and efficient operation of photovoltaic power system operation. In light of this, we propose a long short-term memory (LSTM) autoencoder (AE) for photovoltaic power forecasting. Initially, to generate encoded sequences the LSTM-encoder extracts the characteristics from the input data. Then the LSTM-decoder decoded the encoded sequences to advance them to the last dense layer for photovoltaic power prediction. The results have confirmed that the LSTM-AE model can achieve better prediction accuracy than the benchmark deep learning methods, in terms of mean absolute error (MAE), mean square error (MSE), mean bias error (MBE), root mean square error (RMSE) and coefficient of determination (R \(^2\) ) performance measures. It can be seen that the proposed model predicts the PV power generation with the R$^2$ of 99.88 \(%\) , 99.98$%$, 99.86$%$, and 99.91$%$ for autumn, winter, spring, and summer, respectively. Furthermore, we conducted experiments using a 23.40 kW PV power plants dataset from DKASC in Australia and the results indicate that our proposed LSTM-AE model with the highest R$^2$ values and minimum forecasting errors compared to the benchmark models can effectively improve stable performance and achieve better accurate photovoltaic power forecasting.

Bio-remediation of Faba bean (Vicia faba cv. luz deotono) plants growing under lead (Pb) contaminated soil using the bacteria strain Bacillus amyloliquefaciens subsp. plantarum UCMB 5033 was tested under three Pb concentrations (2000mg/L 0.5%, 2500mg/L 1.0%, 3000mg/L 5%). Growth parameters (plant height, plant fresh weight, and plant dry weight of the Pb-treated bacteria inoculated Faba bean plants showed significant increases compared to the Pb-treated non-inoculated Faba bean plants under Pb concentration of 0.5% and 1.0% giving 5.76%, 50.43% increases in height, 42.68%, 253.36% increase in fresh wt., and 237.69%, 325.97% increase in dry wt. Regarding the plant nutrient, NPK contents the non-inoculated Pb–treated plants gave significantly the highest N content under all Pb concentration levels and the highest PK contents under Pb concentrations 0.5 and 1.0% compared to the bio-remediated plants. But the bio-remediated plants dominated the non-inoculated Faba bean plants in absorbing the highest PK contents under a Pb concentration of 5.0%. Regarding Pb absorption, the bio-remediated plants dominated the non-inoculated Faba bean plants and absorbed the highest Pb especially under 1.0% Pb concentration. Bacillus amyloliquefaciens subsp. plantarum UCMB 5033 may be considered a bio-remediator for Faba bean plants grown under Pb contaminated soils.

In chemical manufactures, the corrosion inhibitors were added in order to reduce the corrosion of mild steel. Chemical molecules are often used on mild steel surfaces as portion of the latest finishing steps before painting and/or storage. Here, this work elucidated the utilization of an isatin derivative, namely, 3-((3-acetylphenyl)imino)indolin-2-one synergistic with zinc oxide nanoparticles for improving the impedance of mild steel (MS) against corrosion in 1.0 M hydrochloric acid using the weight loss method and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Weight loss measurements demonstrated that the best 3-((3-acetylphenyl)imino)indolin-2-one concentration was 0.5 mM and the inhibition efficiency was 83% whereas the inhibition efficiency was 92% with addition of ZnO NPs. 3-((3-Acetylphenyl)imino)indolin-2-one retards the corrosion process at 300 K and demonstrates low inhibition efficiencies at 310, 320 and 330 K.

Vertical cavity semiconductor optical amplifiers (VCSOAs) based on GaInNAsSb active region is designed to operate in reflection mode at wavelength of 1300 nm. Addition of antimony Sb to the GaInNAs has dramatically improve the performance of VCSOAs, where the wavelength shifts to longer wavelength. This study is aimed to design GaInNAsSb/GaAs quantum wells (QWs) enclosed between various periods of front and 25-periods of back of AlGaAs/GaAs distributed Bragg mirrors (DBRs) by using MATLAB. GaInNAsSb can be grown and lattice matched to GaAs with a very small band gap and it can be grown monolithically on high quality GaAs/AlGaAs distributed Bragg reflector. Peak reflection gain at around of 53.2 dB at single pass gain of 1.076 is observed. In addition, amplifier bandwidth at various front back mirrors reflectivities is simulated to achieve high gain and wide optical bandwidth at low reflectivity of front mirrors.

The integration of photovoltaic power brings the key to clean energy. However, the increasing proportion of photovoltaic (PV) energy in power systems due to the random and intermittent nature of solar energy resources is causing difficulties for system operators to dispatch PV power stations. To reduce the negative influence of the use of PV power, it is great significant to predict PV power accurately. In this paper, we propose a high-precision hybrid neural network model that employs Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) and Convolution Neural Network (CNN) to build a GRU-CNN model to forecast PV system output power. The proposed framework has two major phases. Firstly, the sample data is divided into training set and test set. For this, the temporal characteristics of the data set are extracted using a GRU model and the spatial characteristics are obtained using the CNN model. Secondly, the final predicted PV power is obtained through the output layer. The forecasting accuracy of GRU-CNN is determined by the mean absolute error (MAE), mean square error (MSE), determination coefficient (R2) and root mean square error (RMSE) values. The findings of the comparison experiments show that the GRU-CNN model has better accuracy than some deep learning methods, including, GRU, CNN and long-short term memory model (LSTM).

Objective: To determine the prevalence of thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) alterations and different types of thyroid dysfunctions in both sexes with no age limitations from variety of sources in Duhok province. Patients and Methods: In this retrospective cross-sectional study, we screened 25040 suspicious cases of thyroid diseases in a year (2019), retrieving the data from the computer of three clinical laboratories in the Duhok City; following exclusion of 470 cases, 24568 cases were included to categorize the different types of thyroid dysfunctions. Results: The prevalence of TSH alteration was 25.03%, 20.55% of them had a high concentration being statistically higher in females, while only 4.48% was low TSH with equal prevalence among both sexes. Out of 24568 patients, the prevalence of subclinical hypothyroidism was 94.85%, followed by 2.20%, 1.20%, 0.78%, 0.67%, and 0.31% for each of subclinical hyperthyroidism, primary hypothyroidism, central hyperthyroidism, central hypothyroidism, and primary hyperthyroidism respectively. Conclusions: The studied population had high prevalence of high TSH level (20.55%), being more prevalent in female than in male. Our survey revealed that the distribution of thyroid disorders was vary among different age groups with highest prevalence of subclinical hypothyroidism in all age groups (94.85%); Also, we concluded that middle & advanced ages, and females were more susceptible to thyroid disorders.

In this paper, nanostructured silicon carbide (SiC) thin films are deposited onto glass substrate using pulsed laser deposition technique. Electrical and optical characterizations such as conductivity, resistivity, transmission, Seeback effect, absorption, absorption coefficient, energy band gap, and extinction coefficient as a function of photon energy, and the effect of thin films thickness on transmission are carried out to characterize the prepared samples. Results showed that the prepared SiC thin film is an n-type semiconductor with an indirect bandgap of ~3 eV, 448 nm cutoff wavelength, 3.4395 × 104 cm−1 absorption coefficient and 0.154 extinction coefficient. The surface morphology of the SiC thin films is studied using scanning electron microscope at a substrate temperature of 400 °C and it is found that the grain size of the prepared SiC thin film is about 30 nm. As such, the nano thin films optical and structural characteristics enable the films to be used as gases sensors in many optoelectronic devices such as the environment and ultraviolet photodiode.