Non-adherence to cardiovascular pharmacotherapy in Iraq assessed using 8-items Morisky questionnaire and analysis of dried blood spot samples

open access journalThe study evaluated the non-adherence to selected cardiovascular medications, atenolol, atorvastatin, bisoprolol, diltiazem, lisinopril, simvastatin and valsartan in Iraqi patients by applying a standardized Morisky questionnaire (8-MMAS) and by measuring therapeutic drug concentrations in dried blood spots (DBS) analyzed by liquid chromatography - high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS). Sixty-nine patients, on continued use of one or more of the selected drugs, were evaluated. The questionnaire showed that 21.7% of participants were non-adherent whereas DBS analysis showed that 49.3% were non-adherent to their medications. No significant correlation between medication non-adherence and gender was detected, but adherence was negatively correlated with the number of medications in the regimen. The 8-items questionnaire was unable to differentiate non-adherence to multiple medications in the prescribed pharmacotherapy regimens. DBS is an alternative to conventional methods to monitor non-adherence objectively. Agreement between the two approaches was weak (Kappa =0.269, p-value 0.05)

International business and the political environment: an exploratory study: "comparative study of Iraqi, Saudi oil trade"

This paper is a Master thesis for the master’s program in International studies in the Department of Sociology and Public Policies at ISCTE University. As the title indicates, the aim of this thesis is to explore what is the political environment and present the concept of international business, and the impact of those works on the political environment by setting the theoretical context and draw that context from a comparative analysis of the historical context of the Iraqi and Saudi oil trade and their impact on the political environment of the stakeholders. The research questions are: What is the concept of the political environment and its components?; Does international business have an impact on the political environment?; How has the Iraqi and Saudi oil trade affected the political environment of these countries?; In order to answer the questions and fulfill the aim of this paper, a qualitative research method has been chosen. The study is mainly based on secondary sources such as textbooks, articles, magazines, and newspapers as well as internet resources. In making the comparative analysis Examination of different historical stages of oil trade and for two different regions and the extent of theoretical convergence of theoretical concepts with the practical realism derived from the events of those stages. This proves the argument of this theory and completed it and how its practical impact on the political environment. The conclusion drawn from the study is that international business affects the political environment and its elements, and the theoretical results coincide with the results of the analysis of the practical experience derived from the historical context of a century, that the Iraqi and Saudi oil trade as one of the international business influenced the political environment of stakeholders, They drew their political behavior, which was reflected in the internal political situation and international relations, which in turn reflected on the security of stakeholders, whether in the form of political risks or development processes for those countries.Este artigo é uma dissertação de mestrado para o programa de mestrado em Estudos Internacionais no Departamento de Sociologia e Políticas Públicas da Universidade Iscte. Como o título indica, o objetivo desta tese é explorar o que é o ambiente político e apresentar o conceito de negócios internacionais e o impacto desses trabalhos no ambiente político, definindo o contexto teórico e extrair esse contexto de uma análise comparativa. do contexto histórico do comércio de petróleo iraquiano e saudita e seu impacto no ambiente político das partes interessadas. As questões de pesquisa são: Qual é o conceito do ambiente político e seus componentes?; Os negócios internacionais têm impacto no ambiente político?; Como o comércio de petróleo do Iraque e da Arábia Saudita afetou o ambiente político desses países?; A fim de responder às questões supracitadas e cumprir o objetivo deste trabalho, optou-se por um método de pesquisa qualitativa. O estudo baseia-se principalmente em fontes secundárias, como livros didáticos, artigos, revistas e jornais, bem como recursos da Internet. Ao fazer a análise comparativa Análise de diferentes estágios históricos do comércio de petróleo e para duas regiões diferentes e a extensão da convergência teórica de conceitos teóricos com o realismo prático derivado dos eventos dessas etapas. Isso prova o argumento dessa teoria e a completou e como seu impacto prático no ambiente político A conclusão tirada do estudo é que os negócios internacionais afetam o ambiente político e seus elementos, e os resultados teóricos coincidem com os resultados da análise da experiência prática derivada do contexto histórico de um século, que o comércio de petróleo iraquiano e saudita como um dos negócios internacionais influenciou o ambiente político das partes interessadas, Eles desenhou seu comportamento político, o que se refletiu na situação política interna e relações internacionais, que por sua vez refletiu sobre a segurança das partes interessadas, seja na forma de riscos políticos ou processos de desenvolvimento para esses países

Relationship between Demographic and Internet Usage

The reason to conduct this research was to evaluate if there is any relationship between the Internet usage and demographic factors (age, income, education, gender, and income level) of the Internet users. Hypotheses regarding the association of Internet usage and different demographic factors were developed. Survey was carried out for the collection of data through questionnaire, which included some questions about the demographics of the respondents, and their usage of Internet. Non-probabilistic sampling was used. Sample size used in this research was 299. Outcomes of this research were anticipated to be helpful for the advertisers to understand the viewership of internet/web pages for the online advertisement. Hence, from the results of this research it was determined that no relationship exists between demographics (age, income, education, gender, and income level) and Internet usage. Keywords: Relationship, Demographics, Internet Usage, Non-probabilistic

Upper Euphrates Dialects between Arab Tribes’ Vernaculars and the Influence of Semitic Languages

لقد بات الاهتمام بدراسة اللهجات من أولويات علم اللغة الحديث، لما يقدمه هذا المجال من إسهامات كبيرة في فهم طبيعة اللغة وتتبع مراحلها التاريخية وبيان مدى تأثير البيئة والزمن في أصواتها وصرفها وبناء الجملة فيها، وما يعكسه ذلك على المستوى الدلالي، فيسلط هذا البحث الضوء على اللهجات العربية في منطقة أعالي الفرات. التي كانت عرضة لتغيرات جيوسياسية فرضت عليها أن تكون محطة لكثير من الأمم متعددة الثقافات واللغات. أثرت وتأثرت بلغات وثقافات سكانها الأصليين، فكان من الضرورة البحث والاستقصاء حول تلك المتغيرات التي تلعب دوراً في الوقوف على تأريخ اللهجات وأصالتها السائدة في هذه المنطقة قيد الدراسة، فاستعرض البحث الطبيعة الجغرافية للمنطقة ودورها في اختلاف اللهجات من قبيلة إلى أخرى، وكذلك تم استعراض الأقوام الأجنبية التي استوطنتها وتركت رواسب لغوية على عربية هذا الجزء من الأرض بشكل مختصر، ومما لا شك فيه كان التأثير متبادلاً، كما يكشف البحث عن الكثير من الألفاظ والسمات اللغوية الأصلية في اللغة العربية حولتها محاولات سرعة إيصال الفكرة والتسهيل إلى تغيير في شكل اللفظ صوتياً وصرفياً، ومن الجدير بالذكر إن من تلك الأمم الساميين التي تشترك لغاتهم بالعربية بالكثير من السمات اللغوية الناشئة من وحدة المصدر، وهو ما ركز عليه البحث في أغلب جوانبه.The interest in the study of dialects has become a priority for modern linguistics, as this area makes significant contributions to understanding the nature of the language, tracking its historical stages, demonstrating the impact of the environment and time on its voices, its disbursement and syntax, and what this reflects at the semantic level. This research highlights Arab dialects in the Upper Euphrates region which were subject to geopolitical changes that forced them to be a station for many multicultural and multilingual nations influenced and are affected by the languages and cultures of its indigenous population. Therefore, it was necessary to research and investigate those variables that play a role in determining the history and authenticity of the dialects prevailing in this area under study. The research reviewed the geographical nature of the region and its role in different dialects from one tribe to another, as well as briefly reviewed the foreign communities that settled it and left linguistic deposits on the Arabic of this part of the land and undoubtedly had a mutual impact. The research also reveals many of the original language and features in Arabic that have been transformed by attempts to quickly communicate the idea and facilitate a change in the form of the word vocally and purely, and it is worth noting that some of these nations are Sami, whose languages share in Arabic many of the language features arising from the source unit, which the research has focused on in most aspects. &nbsp

Translating Necessity Modality Verbs in Governmental Contracts Texts from Arabic into English

The present paper goes to discover the notion and types of contracts. Moreover, it tries to find the employment of necessity modality verbs in the governmental contract’s texts. The methodology of analysis employed in this research is Fairclough\u27s (1989) linguistic model, which is used in the analysis and interpretation of the necessity verbs in governmental contracts texts. The Data of this study have been rendered by 15 M.A. students in the department of translation at the College of Arts, University of Tikrit. The translational model suggested by Catford (1965) is also employed

Q-learning based distributed denial of service detection

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks the target service providers by sending a huge amount of traffic to prevent legitimate users from getting the service. These attacks become more challenging in the software-defined network paradigm, due to the separation of the control plane from the data plane. Centralized software defined networks are more vulnerable to DDoS attacks that may cause the failure of all networks. In this work, a new approach is proposed based on q-learning to enhance the detection of DDoS attacks and reduce false positives and false negatives. The results of this work are compared with entropy detection in terms of the number of received packets to detect the attack and also the continuity of service for legitimate users. Moreover, these results indicate that the proposed system detects the DDoS attack from flash crowds and redirects the traffic to the edge of the data center. A second controller is used to redirect traffic to a honeypot server that works as a mirror server. This guarantees the continuity of service for both normal and suspected traffic until further analysis is done. The results indicate an increase of up to 50% in the throughput compared to other approaches

Genom Editing of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Using CRISPR-Cas9 System: A Review Study

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an important yeast has been exploited for a long time to produce alcohol or bread. Moreover, genetically engineered S. cerevisiae cells continue to be used as cell factories for production of biofuels, pharmaceutical proteins and food additives. Genetically modified strain of S. cerevisiae created using traditional methods is laborious and time consuming. Recently, originally an immune system in archaea and bacteria, Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats “CRISPR” and CRISPR-associated “Cas” have been used exploited  as a flexible tool for genome editing. Until now, this tool has been applied to many organisms including yeast. Here, we review the importance of S. cerevisiae as an industrial platform and the use of CRISPR/Cas system and its applications in research and industry of this yeast. &nbsp

A proposed architecture of big educational data using hadoop at the University of Kufa

Nowadays, educational data have been increased rapidly because of the online services provided for both students and staff. University of Kufa (UoK) generates a massive amount of data annually due to the use of e-learning web-based systems, network servers, Windows applications, and Students Information System (SIS).  This data is wasted as traditional management software are not capable to analysis it. As a result, the Big Educational Data concept rises to help education sectors by providing new e-learning methods, allowing to meet individual demands and reach the learners' goals, and supporting the students and teacher’s interaction. This paper focuses on designing Big Data analysis architecture, based on the Hadoop in the UoK and the same case for other Iraqi universities. The impact of this work, help the students learn, emphasizing the need of academic researchers and data science specialist for learning and practicing Big Data analytics and support the analysis of the e-learning management system and set the first step toward developing data repository and data policy in UoK